Login
The year is 1983 and L.A is a booming city. There are those who are living the dream as a film producer or a news anchor. There are also those people who are working for the minimum just looking to get by. Then there are the young people who are hooked on sex drugs and rock and roll. This is there story, a story about the ups and downs of the rich and the poor all trying to make a living and be happy.
The Informers is basically a softcore porn film with an 80's music soundtrack. There is nothing else that really defines this film as being set in 1980's L.A. However if you are a fan of films with sex and drugs and rock bands this is your film. There are plenty of characters and most of them are connected by sleeping together with only a few connected minimally through a sub plot. There are even two characters (Played by Brad Renfro and Mickey Rourke) that seem to have no connection to any of the other characters except for a brief encounter. The Informers makes it tough to decide who the main character is and who does not matter very much to the story at all. These characters were all about sex and drugs. However the story that involved Rourke and Renfro's characters was different. Rourke played Pete and Renfro played his nephew Jack a door man at a hotel. Pete was an ex con looking to pay back some money he owed and he needed to stay at Jacks house. Pete was displayed as a slimy individual and Jack was portrayed as nervous and a man working to change his life. This was the best part of the film and Rourke and Renfro did awesome jobs opposite each other.
Sex in a film does not have to be bad thing, it can advance the plot, it can compromise the characters and the beliefs they have, but the sex in this movie was a bit over the top. They had these characters who basically just got together to have sex parties. Then as the film progressed one of the females develops AIDS at a rather alarming rate, which is unrealistic because the Aids virus takes about 10 years to show affects on the human body and you can go a long time before you even get feel sick at all. And yet through the film it was one female character who was sick and through out the film she was shown having sex with multiple characters who just seemed to be fine. The young cast did a decent job, but there were no real authentic characters that you could feel bad for. Jon Foster and Amber Heard lead the young cast as well as they could. I just think it comes down to the script trying to cram too much into a film that is only 98 minutes long. The Sex in this film was just about young good looking people sharing their bodies with each other, without the emotional connection and perhaps that is why it is extremely difficult to ever buy into these characters.
What the Informers does so well is capture the 80's music style. At times during the film you can really get a feel for what the 80's music was all about. When they watched T.V you could see the music videos playing in the background and it was classic 80's as we know it. The music was the best part about the film, as these peoples lives unfolded the music is what told the story and what helped make the story unfold smoother. There was a lot that was happening during the 98 minutes that this film ran for.
This film is apparently based on a set of short stories written by Brett Easton Ellis and you can tell this easily when watching the film. It seemed like Gregor Jordan and his crew was grasping to try and have these characters weave in and out of each others stories. It would have been much better had they focused on one of the short stories instead of trying to add as much realism to all these character and failing on all but 3 or 4 of them. There were some big names in this feature including Kim Basinger, Billy Bob Thornton and Winona Ryder all of whom seemed to be o.k. with giving just a half decent portrayal. Perhaps it just seemed this way because much of the spotlight was given to the young and ambitious cast they were working with or because Rourke and Renfro did such an amazing job bringing interest and intrigue to the lives of their characters. Pete and Jack were the one set of character whose tale of origins seemed like it would be an interesting story and yet they only mention it in a brief statement.
And despite everything I watched in this film, The Sex, the 80's coming alive, Mickey Rourke being his usual awesome self and Brad Renfros final portrayal (one hell of a final portrayal I might add) part of me wants to absolutely hate this film and part of me wants to embrace the 80's feel it had and just take it for what it is. I am feeling generous today so I will tell anyone who is on the fence about this film to give it a chance, because it was truly on the verge of being something spectacular and awesome and so maybe for you people out there still wanting to see it it will be awesome.
6/10
