The Informers

The kids are most definitely not all right in The Informers, directed by Gregor Jordan from Bret Easton Ellis’ 1994 novel and set in haute Los Angeles during the early years of the Reagan era. The Informers is mainly a spectacle of privileged, pretty young people (and youthful actors) acting badly. Nights of omnisexual anomie, days of robotic synth-music videos, druggy excess, teenage orgies, and (as this is an ’80s allegory) a virulent mystery infection. Are these kids truly depraved or just fucked up? Bad parents? Too much television? A toxic environment? Playing a tragically married couple of Tinseltown aristos, Billy Bob Thornton and Kim Basinger bring a weary measure of taut musculature and grown-up professionalism to the movie. Basinger’s erstwhile ’80s co-star Mickey Rourke is on hand as a dissolute prince of darkness; most lizardly in a leather porkpie hat, an orange tan, and some scraggly facial shrubbery, Rourke elevates the movie’s sleaze count even as he deflects his scenes toward narcoleptic comedy. Winona Ryder provides another odd flashback, in the role of Thornton’s mistress. In this lurid trash compactor, there’s plenty of incident but not much plot.