Greed is good. Sex is easy. Youth is forever.
Or so goes the tagline for The Informers, a new film adapted from a collection of short stories by Bret Easton Ellis. You may recognize Ellis's name from the posters of several films in the past decade, namely American Psycho and The Rules of Attraction (there's also Glitterati, if that ever sees the light of day). If you're familiar with his work, you'll know, loosely, what to expect from his latest venture: Sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. There's plenty of all the aforementioned (hence the tagline), but, unfortunately the end result is more of a melodramatic mess than an examination of the excesses of the '80s.
Don't blame the actors, especially the more seasoned among them. A few — Kim Basinger, Mickey Rourke and to a slightly lesser degree Winona Ryder and Billy Bob Thornton — even give memorable performances in a movie that is anything but. The younger newcomers don't fare quite as well with the inane script that contains far too many storylines with far too many unlikeable characters. What's worse, the stories barely intersect, adding confusion on top of disdain.
Let me try to explain what goes down, when you read more
