Absolutely Fantastic

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

As a movie capturing a certain drug taking promiscuous 80s crowd in Los Angeles it has some value. A social document preserving excess just before AIDS. But the story is weak and the characters don't develop into anything interesting before the end of the movie. There isn't enough resolution to the stories. Especially the relationship between the central young characters played by Jon Foster and Amber Heard. He isn't that convincingly jaded - looks a little fresh faced. She is quite good at acting strung out and beautifully amoral. Kim Basinger is effective as a bitter unhappy wife. Billy Bob looks more wrong side of the tracks than right so maybe not the best choice. Good to see Winona as a mistress. She is good at acting unhappy.Only if you are a fan of Bret Easton Ellis and his type of social commentary.

This movie's reputation is a good example of herd mentality. The negative critical reaction to it was so overwhelming, that it even its screenwriter Bret Ellis became more and more critical of the film (although he had his own personal drama while trying to get this project made and really disagreed with director's interpretation). This movie IS an interpretation of the book it is based on and in my opinion, while it might not be the most entertaining interpretation there can be, it is actually very close to the . The film creates kind of a static feeling, a feeling of relaxation and being frozen in the moment - and it is the same feeling I've got from the book. Bret Ellis himself wanted a more active and fast-paced movie, and it probably would have been more entertaining, but also probably farther from source material, for better or worse. Some people have said the script was supposed to be much funnier and movie is too dark in its tone. Well it is subjective, in my opinion the humor is all there and actually it is even better for the dark humor of the situations and dialogue to amplify the darkness and despair. In my opinion the movie was hated so much to a large degree because people just don't want to see this more ambiguous material on the screen. They want to see more obvious, spelled out stories, heroes, villains, moral messages, powerful climaxes etc - which are not bad things, there are brilliant movies based on these elements, but they are not be all end all of art. This film, like the book it is based on, shows, explores, sometimes exaggerates and makes fun of - contrasts and conflicts of life, ambiguity of different life situations. What makes both the film and the book interesting is they avoid a lot of the more fake and unnatural literary devices like clear and powerful dramatic conclusions, idealized characters, forced plot. And people generally don't like this. They want a more clear "heroes" or "villains", they want plot to move quickly, film to have a clear message etc. But the most interesting thing about this film is there is no clear message like "Drugs are bad, go to school" and characters are more ambiguous. If you are honest with yourself, you won't just write them off as selfish empty people (the reaction to this film and a lot of Ellis prose shows that a lot of people don't want to be honest with themselves) - they are more interesting and while mostly being tragic have a perspective you can understand. A protagonist is a young guy who has all the money and time he can need and has group sex with very attractive people which, is very seductive. He starts to develop more traditional feelings toward a girl he sleeps with and tries to have more exclusivity with her, which she doesn't want at the moment because she still loves the polygamy and pleasures it brings and also may be too infantile to understand his impulse - also bad things are about to happen to her. An estranged father played excellently by Chris Isaac is a certain man who was disappointed in marriage and became a bachelor and is hitting on women everywhere without conscious effort and tries to connect with his son, but the man he is, his history with his son and how it has shaped his son's personality make it futile.Even the scary sociopath played by Billy Bob Thornton has a couple of moments when you understand where's he coming from - like his honest answer "I don't know" to his wife's question "Did you ever love me". In the end although I like the movie I must say I agree with Bret Ellis that if the movie was at the same time made longer to include more scenes that were shot and some scenes were made faster and less long and heavy it honestly might have benefited and made more rewatchable.

When I first started watching The Informers, I wanted to shut if off because I was bored. It started slow, but you have to watch through to understand the subplot. That was how everyone was connected to each other, and that they generally shared loose morals and lack of trust. There wasn't a single relationship of complete trust in this film. The thread of who was sleeping with whom could be traced through many of the main characters, which became important in light of AIDS. People didn't understand AIDS in 1983, which was readily apparent in The Informers. The band which the movie gets its name from represented the height of immorality and seemed to set the tone for the film. The character Graham even asks his friend Martin what would happen if you had no one to tell you right from wrong. He wanted someone like that, but didn't know who to trust. He then asked Martin whether he slept around, and Martin lied to his face. Graham's girlfriend was loose, and his parents weren't there to guide him. In the end the only moral characters were the doorman who let the captive kid go, and Graham, who was "the one who loves Christie." Christie may have been the most immoral of all, and she ended up dying of AIDS on a beach. Graham tells her that there is no more sun, and this seems to imply that the party is over, which meant also that her life was over.Overall, a good film. You need to watch it through to understand it. The relationships that should have been closest were far from it. People kept telling Graham that he has everything, and yet he had nothing that really mattered. The most redeeming characters were Graham and Jack the hotel doorman (the actor who played the doorman died of a drug overdose!). Not a film to buy, though.

In hindsight the only reason to watch this movie is to admire Amber Heard's next to perfect physique.Otherwise it is yet another boring adaptation of king of boring Bret Easton Ellis, who delights in writing about shallow people living their shallow lives - to be sure in luxurious settings. Unfortunately none of these people are the least interesting and one probably learns more about the world studying an ashtray for two hours.Thanks to an uninspired script and a directing without direction the fantastic cast can't act with either credibility or passion and looks as interested in the movie as we are.It may be that this film becomes watchable under the influence. Perhaps a DVD is given free of charge for any significant purchase of coke in Hollywood.