Major Crimes
A little over an hour into “The Informer”, Pete Koslow (an excellent Joel Kinnaman) makes a call from jail. He’s trying to get on to his FBI handler to sort out the parameters of his role as an informant. But as the call goes on, he realises that he’s in over his head. The realisation hits like a ton of bricks and as the camera stays, mercilessly, on Kinnaman’s face we watch him trying to make sense of the dizzying turn of events. It’s the turning point in a film that has already had its share of turning points, with more to come, and one of the sharpest moments in the well-paced thriller. There’s a similar moment in the police-drama, “Black and Blue”. In this case, policewoman Alicia West (played by Naomie Harris in fine form) is confiding her recently learned knowledge to someone she trusts. She’s uncovered a ring of corrupt cops in her department and is trying to turn them in, but as she sorts out her feelings, she realises that her confidante is equally compromised, and like in “The Informer” the camera stays on her face as the horrible truth dawns. The fact that both thrillers feature their protagonists coming-to-grips with betrayal is not incidental, but speaks to a larger relationship between the two films.
“The Informer” and “Black and Blue” are two genre films working with specific closeness in the crime thriller genres, buoyed by marvellous performances at their centre. They’re both mining familiar territory with real world implications - institutions of power cannot be trusted, especially law-enforcement bodies. Familiar themes notwithstanding, both films are doing more than treading already trodden ground. In both cases, there’s enough technical proficiency and narrative commitment at work to establish the value of the commentary at work in both films.
In “The Informer”, reformed criminal and FBI informant Pete Koslow gets caught up in NYPD / FBI crosshairs when an NYPD officer dies in his presence turning him into a pawn for the both organisations, and the Polish crime syndicate he’s been infiltrating. The film is adapted from a 2009 Swedish novel, and the labyrinth heavy twist and turns of the plot do recall the intricacies of a well-plotted novel in the best of ways. On its surface, “The Informer” is familiar but the plot heavy film (it’s no surprise a criticism has been that it may work better as a miniseries) establishes its value in the way that it unpredictably resists classification with an unpredictable plot turn at every corner. Every fifteen minutes the film seems to be gestating into something different and the thing keeping these conflicting streams together is the man at the centre of it –Kinnaman as Koslow.
The film is not quite a character study, and “The Informer” features a strong ensemble cast doing good work. The screenplay by trio of Andrea Di Stefano (who also directs), Matt Cook and Rowan Joffe isn’t ostensibly working to dig into Koslow’s character in any incisive way, and yet every scene with Kinnaman feels like it’s digging deep. Kinnaman is most recognisable as the lead of the ill-fated “RoboCop” remake, but has done his best work on the small-screen, such as in AMC’s “The Killing”. Here, he’s afforded the chance to play on his abilities in a performance that, in a fair world, would propel him to stardom.