Inside job to nab the mob

THE INFORMER (15) ★★★

WE know roughly where the pieces will fall in this very solidly made crime thriller.

But actor-turned-director Andrea Di Stefano assembles them in some very pleasing patterns.

Joel Kinnaman, a charismatic actor whose CV includes a forgettable RoboCop reboot and DC’s dire Suicide Squad, plays Pete Koslow, yet another exspecial forces hard nut who has fallen on hard times.

Thankfully, Pete isn’t mourning the loss of the dead wife and/or child he failed to protect. In slight contravention of a crime thriller cliché, Pete did manage to save his wife (Ana de Armas) from a violent assailant.

When we meet him, he’s paying off his early release by working as an “off the books” informant for Rosamund Pike’s ambitious FBI agent Wilcox.

Pete has played on his Polish heritage to infiltrate a “Polack” drug gang run by a sinister crime lord. In a nicely staged early scene, Pete is tasked with picking up a Polish diplomat turned drug mule. But when a drug deal goes wrong, Wilcox finds herself in trouble with her shady boss Montgomery (Clive Owen). She hatches a Plan B. Pete will keep working for the crime syndicate from behind bars.

But when NYPD cop (rapper Common) begins sniffing around, Pete finds himself caught in the crosshairs. He’ll have to use all his skills to fight off the prison hitmen to find a way out of the web spun by the corrupt FBI officers. Kinnaman proves his leading man credentials with a brooding turn. Lipinski drips menace as the softly spoken crime lord, Owen oozes across the screen as the slimy Montgomery and Sam Spruell snivels marvellously as the bent screw Slewitt.

They say a film is only as good as its villain, and this has three great ones.