The Informant

"What he did was incredibly bold and courageous," says Matt Damon, who plays Whitacre in the film.

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"I saw this couple kissing passionately on the couch" and realized it was Matt Damon and wife ­Luciana. Why the PDA? "When Matt gained weight for 'The Informant!', he felt gross," says a different source. "Now he's working hard on his body and bringing back the romance in his marriage."

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"But, in fact, in the last 15 or 20 years (governments) have relied almost exclusively on whistle-blowers to make their cases," Connor said. And as Whitacre showed, whistle blowers often don't have noble motives. "The movie should be taken very, very seriously," said Sam Antar, a CPA who turned government witness against his employer in the 1980's. "In white-collar cases, the governments have to rely on informants ... in effect, relying on unsavory characters to make their case,"

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"The Informant!", which is in theaters now. So Fortune decided to go back to Whitacre and find out what he thought of the movie. (In a climactic scene toward the end of the film, Matt Damon, as Whitacre, tries desperately to use the fact that Fortune magazine--"THE Fortune magazine!" he says -- published these "facts" as proof that he's telling the truth.)

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Near the end of the film Whitacre is heard to say to his interrogators: "I'm sorry. I feel real bad"

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"This thing made me understand lysine and glutamate," said Skip Huston, who owns the downtown Avon Theater, the site of the movie's Decatur debut.

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"It's done, it's over with," said pool store manager Don Stolz, 52. "I think the excitement of the movie being done in Decatur overrides all of that."

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"How often do you see a guy whose last film made a quarter of a billion dollars walking around downtown Decatur, even if he did have a toupee and a bad mustache?" asked Tim Cain, entertainment editor at the Decatur Herald & Review.

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Speaking at the New York premiere of his film 'The Informant!', Matt, 38, said: "George just wasn't right for the part, thank God, so I got to play it. "He gets enough good roles, he doesn't need all the good ones, he's got to leave some for the rest of us!"

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"Damon's performance is worth watching even as his character exhausts us with half-truths and whole lies." "Matt Damon is goofy perfection," writes Lou Lumenick in the New York Post. "Matt Damon delivers comedic gold," says Peter Howell in the Toronto Star . It all works to the benefit of the film itself, Michael Sragow observes in the Baltimore Sun . "At its peak, it's a crackpot character comedy,"

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