Brett Easton Ellis brilliantly dissects contemporary American society, a culture in which too much is never enough. Now, adapting his own acclaimed novel for the screen, he returns with The Informers, to the Los Angeles of the early 1980's with a multi-strand narrative that deftly balances a vast array of characters who represent both the top of the heap (a Hollywood dream merchant, a dissolute rock star, an aging newscaster) and the bottom (a voyeuristic doorman, an amoral ex-con). Connecting all his intertwining strands are the quintessential Ellis protagonists -- a group of beautiful, blonde young men and women who sleep all day and party all night, doing drugs -- and one another -- with abandon, never realizing that they are dancing on the edge of a volcano. 
Adapted from a collection of semi-connected short stories from that master of 1980s-era excess Bret Easton Ellis, The Informers fails to develop one interesting character among the roughly 20 or so unhappy, self-loathing scenesters that populate the film. From the bleak and numbing tone of the movie, I am assuming we are supposed to believe that there is some kind of profound truth to be found amid all the pretty faces and general miserable-ness that’s on display here. Instead, The Informers becomes that rare movie that is so tedious it dares you to keep watching. Director Gregor Jordan took over “The Informers” from Nicholas Jarecki (who co-scripted the film with Ellis) and—according to news reports—changed the tone from lighthearted to deadly serious. In a controversial move, he also excised all of the supernatural content. There are plenty of vampires and zombies left in the movie, of course, only they aren’t literal. They are the dirty pretty things of early-80s Los Angeles. Jon Foster plays a rich, drug-dealing wastoid who wakes up each morning with either his hot, naked girlfriend or his hot, naked girlfriend and his music-video-directing-male-prostitute buddy. Does he want more out of his life? The answer for him is similar to the answer of that question for every other character: I guess so. Billy Bob Thornton is Foster’s Dad, a sleazy Hollywood exec who’s cheating on his drugged-out wife (Kim Basinger) with a TV news anchor, played by Winona Ryder—who seems as if she’s in a different film altogether because she’s almost likeable, even though she’s barely in the movie at all. Mickey Rourke is lucky “The Wrestler” came out before The Informers could do any damage to his comeback because his role as the debauched kid-stealing uncle of a sweaty hotel clerk (the late Brad Renfro) is a real headscratcher. There’s also a Bryan Ferry/Gary Numan-looking rock star who can’t tell what city he’s in and whose music is so awful that you don’t believe for a moment that anybody would come see him. This gets at the heart of what is wrong with The Informers. Characters don’t necessarily have to be nice for them to be characters that I care about, but identifying with their desires and needs (or lack thereof) might be a start. Jordan keeps his characters at arms length—which is the same place where they keep each other. He gazes at all of his characters as if they were specimens trapped between glass slides. If the vampire connection was metaphorical in the book, then so is the AIDS epidemic (which is so new it doesn’t have a name yet on the news) in the movie. Like everything else though, it’s so obvious that it becomes tedious. This group of soulless hedonists are all connected sexually one way or another and we can see the plague that will wipe them out coming way before they do. Is it poetic justice or hackneyed transparency? A pointless accidental death launches the aimless narrative, which is specifically set in 1984. We know this because a televised clip of Ronald Reagan is followed by one of many scenes of a couple fornicating. There are men and women, men and men, threesomes and foursomes, and underage teens of both sexes who wake up in the bed of a blitzed-out rock star (Raido) who understandably has been denied visitation with his son. If the film had a center, it would probably be self-pitying Graham (Foster), son of sleazy movie producer William (Thornton). William is having an affair with TV anchor Cheryl (Winona Ryder) but wants to get back with his estranged wife, Graham's mom Laura (Kim Basinger), to avoid giving her half his assets in a divorce. Graham and his sister numb themselves to their ennui with frequent ingestion of drugs and by having sex (separately) with Martin (Austin Nichols), who is also servicing Laura on the side. If you think that's sleazy, consider what passes for the movie's comic subplot. Representing the other end of La La Land's messed up scale, Peter (Mickey Rourke) kidnaps a youngster and plans to sell him to a pedophile ring with the help of his nephew Jack (Renfro). By comparison, the efforts of Les (Chris Isaak) to hook up him and his disgusted son Tim (Lou Pucci Taylor) with underage hotties in Hawaii seems positively wholesome. The Informers is a movie so sleazy it makes you want to take a bath afterward. Rarely has so much sin seemed so boring. In fact, the movie seems at times so devoid of any forward plot movement that it seems like there is no end in sight. When the end finally comes, it is completely arbitrary. The only thing that cued me into the fact that the film may be ending was the familiar wide-angle zoom-out to music. A dreary 2 on my "Go See" scale and it only gets that because it starts off intriguing, but soon falls flat.
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