THE INFORMANT (15, 108 mins) *** Starring Matt Damon, Melanie Lynskey, Scott Bakula, Joel McHale, Patton Oswalt, Clancy Brown, Frank Welker, Eddie Jemison

We all want to do the right thing, but few of us ever put ourselves on the line for the sake of a greater good.

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In the early 1990s, family man Mark Whiteacre decided to blow the whistle on a global price-fixing scam in the agricultural industry by turning informant for the FBI.

He was the highest-level executive in American history to turn against his employers.

By agreeing to wear a wire to various meetings, Whiteacre provided the authorities with that essential link to the boardrooms of Archer Daniels Midland, where all of the decisions were made behind closed doors.

FBI agents were delighted as the case slowly but surely took shape, but there was something that their star witness was keeping from them. Great swathes of his testimony and his snippets of insider information were the product of a fertile and overly-active imagination.

He also neglected to mention around nine million dollars in embezzled funds, one of the perks of his position as a company vice-president.

Director Steven Soderbergh recounts this incredible true story of bluff and bluster in The Informant!, adapted from Kurt Eichenwald’s book of the same name.

The Informant! is a fascinating, and at times amusing, true story about an everyman who pulled the wool over the eyes of some of the US government’s most highly-trained officers.

Damon gained 30lbs and an unflattering moustache for the role, delivering a tour de force performance as a man lost in his own web of lies, deceit and insider dealing.

A voiceover reveals some of the truth of Mark’s feelings as he imagines himself a hero in one of his favourite John Grisham page-turners.

When the truth about Mark’s actions is revealed, we begin to squirm in our seats as he attempts to dig himself out of a hole with even more fibs, but only ends up going deeper and deeper, past the point of no return.