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Download The Informers Movie: The Last Film of Brad Renfro, Dedicated to His Memory



"The Informers" is about dread, despair and doom, and its characters are almost all about to be hit with more reasons for dread and despair, and a shared doom. It takes place in the Los Angeles show-biz drug subculture of 1983, when AIDS didn't have a name and cocaine looked like the answer to something. It demonstrates the eerie ways that music and movies connect people from vastly different lives in a subterranean way where desire is the common currency.


If "The Informers" doesn't sound to you like a pleasant time at the movies, you are right. To repeat: dread, despair and doom. It is often however repulsively fascinating and has been directed by Gregor Jordan as a soap opera from hell, with good sets and costumes. If he finds no depths in the characters, well, what depths are there? What you see is what you get. Sometimes less than that. Some viewers of "The Informers" criticize it for lacking a third act, but these lives are all two-act plays.




Download The Informers Movie Movie




An article published by Reuters described the story as "seven stories taking course during a week in the life of movie executives, rock stars, a vampire and other morally challenged characters", set in 1980s Los Angeles.[3] The supernatural content was not to be included in the final film, however.[4]


A new wave rock singer named Bryan Metro flies into Los Angeles. He stumbles through his fancy hotel room and has sex with young groupies. Getting out of the bath, he slips on the wet floor and slashes open his hand. Upon answering the phone, he is berated by his manager for sleeping with underage groupies, and he mumbles that he needs a doctor. Later, he is taken to meet a film producer who hopes to make a profitable B-movie starring the singer. The singer appears to be barely coherent, and his attention is only caught when he sees a young girl wearing braces watching television in an adjoining room. Bryan staggers towards her and takes her into a bedroom. Later, he stumbles into a hotel room and finds a groupie in his bed. Slurring his words, he asks her to come closer, and he kisses her, and then punches her in the face.


Brandon Routh was originally cast as Bruce, but is absent from the finished movie after a decision to excise all the "vampire scenes" from the film adaptation.[4] Ashley Olsen was originally cast as Christie, but withdrew and was replaced by Heard.[5] There may be one vampire in the film, albeit undeclared. Dirk, who claims that he has paid Rourke's character for "something" confronts Renfro to ask for the kidnapped boy. The pale-skinned Dirk has come for the young boy whom Rourke has kidnapped for $6,000.


According to Fox News, Ellis and Jarecki had spent three years working on a script and prepping the film for release, and Jarecki was set to direct. The film was supposed to be "an absurdist, lighthearted, and expansive satire." When producers replaced Jarecki with Australian director Gregor Jordan, the tone of the film strayed away from Ellis and Jarecki's original premise to become something that the cast and writers were embarrassed by. Amid concerns about the budget and about sex and violence (much like that of Ellis' earlier adaptation, American Psycho), the vampire subplot was excised from the movie entirely along with actor Brandon Routh, who played a vampire. Jordan's final version, which has received negative reviews from some critics, became "some terrible, dark meditation" under his interpretation of the script, according to an insider involved with the production. Jordan also reportedly cut the script down from Ellis' original 150 pages to only 94.[6]


Sonny Bunch from the Washington Times stated that to understand the film, a viewer should "[i]magine American Psycho with less violence but more nudity, transplanted from New York City to California and stripped of all self-awareness". John Anderson from the Washington Post called it a "... nihilistic, narcissistic, knuckleheaded movie about nihilistic, narcissistic knuckleheads"; he states that it "...might have been an interesting exercise in satire, if it only had a sense of humor. Which it doesn't".[11]


Paul Chambers from CNNRadio referred to the film as "bleak, boring and bloated". Owen Gleiberman from Entertainment Weekly stated that the film is "...by far the most slack, ho-hum movie ever made from Ellis' material". Cosmo Landesman from The Sunday Times commented, "It has a good cast and a terrific 1980s soundtrack (Devo, Simple Minds)". At the same time, Landesman stated that the film "...also has the superficiality of a TV soap", which means that while the film "...is not so bad that you can't sit back and enjoy it, but nor is it good enough to go and see. Several critics attacked the film for its prurient elements. James Berardinelli from ReelViews called it "... the kind of movie that, upon leaving the theater, provokes the urge to take a shower". In a similar vein, Lou Lumenick from the New York Post quipped that the film is "... so seamy it makes you want to take a bath afterward", and he stated that "[r]arely has so much sin seemed so boring".[11]


I can't call this movie utterly worthless because it does feature a beautiful and gloriously naked Amber Heard in several different scenes, as well as a couple of veteran performers who are fun to watch. Taken as a whole, however, I've gotten more enjoyment out of reading the ingredients on the side of a box of cereal.Set in 1983 Los Angeles, this film is based on a novel by Bret Easton Ellis. But unlike Less Than Zero, an Ellis-based movie that was roughly contemporaneous to the era it was depicting, The Informers is a dry and as cold and as distant as an archaeological dig or a scientist studying something under a microscope. It also has all the subtlety of an incontinent badger, tossing awful 1980s fashions and hairstyles in your face and throwing up a 80s pop culture reference roughly ever 4 minutes. I nearly stopped the DVD before this thing was halfway through and did something more useful with my time. Like clipping toenails or plucking out some back hair.This is one of those stories where we're all supposed to learn something by looking at the miserable, pathetic lives of a bunch of tangentially connected people. Graham Sloan (Jon Foster) is an aimless, drug-dealing college kid who spends his time either having sex with his girlfriend Christie (Amber Heard) and his best friend Martin (Austin Nichols) or lamenting the emptiness of his existence. Martin one of Ellis' soulless douchebags and Christie is basically just a hot piece of ass that winds up being another 80s pop culture reference. Graham's father (Billy Bob Thornton) is a movie producer that's trying to get back together with Graham's mother (Kim Basinger), even though he's still hung up on a local newswoman (Winona Ryder).But wait, there's more! Graham's other friend Tim (Lou Taylor Pucci) spends the movie in Hawaii with a father (Chris Isaak) he feels nothing but contempt for. We also get the tale of a burned out rock star (Mel Raldo) whose wife is also sleeping with Graham's friend Martin. And we get to see the front desk clerk at Christie's apartment (Brad Renfro) get mixed up in a kidnapping and sex slavery deal with Peter (Mickey Rourke), a scary dude and the clerk's father figure.As mentioned previously, the good of this movie consists of three things.1. The nude and lovely Heard.2. Kim Basinger's performance as a woman on the edge of emotional collapse. She only gets one scene where she gets to yell and carry on, but the seething turmoil she keeps going under the skin of Graham's mom is something to see. For an actress who was never much more than a face in her prime, Basinger is aging quite gracefully as both a woman and a thespian.3. Getting to experience Mickey Rourke's charisma on screen. Whatever that indefinable "it" is that some people have and some don't, Rourke has it in spades. It's too bad that so many years of various forms of self-abuse have left Rourke so freakish-looking that there will never be that many more good roles for him. He's barely more than a cameo here, which is what his career will largely be from now on…unless he starts doing a lot of science-fiction.Beyond that, and some good work in a bad role by the late Brad Renfro, the rest of The Informers is pedantic rubbish. There's no point to these characters, their perversions or their suffering. Billy Bob Thornton looks like he's acting under the influence of Prozac. Winona Ryder appears to have taken this job as a form of extended community service. The younger members of the cast have the appeal of frozen slabs of beef, which may be intentional but remains unappetizing. All of the disparate plot threads resolve themselves exactly the way you expect them to, occasionally doing so with a character explaining what the resolution is supposed to mean so the audience doesn't miss it. It's enough of a struggle to get through a stupid film. It's almost too much to bear when that stupid film thinks I'm stupider than it.This is yet another one of those movies that leaves you wondering "Who the bleep thought this was a good idea?" It's not like the name of Bret Easton Ellis guarantees any box office or critical acclaim. There had to have been a lot of money, drugs and sexual favors exchanged to get this film made. Unless someone is willing to give you money, drugs or do that thing your significant other won't do, stay away from The Informers.


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.


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