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Not every thriller is going to get a fair crack of the whip when it first comes out, and it doesn’t always get the life it deserves until much later. Sometimes, a movie arrives with a stacked cast and just slips completely through the cracks. That’s precisely what happened to this movie, a gritty undercover thriller that came and went without making much noise in theaters. Now, years later, it’s getting another shot at finding the audience that missed it in that haven for forgotten movies: late night streaming!
Based on the 2009 novel Three Seconds by Roslund & Hellström, The Informer follows Pete Koslow, an ex-convict turned undercover informant for the FBI, but a drug deal goes wrong, Pete has to go back behind bars in order to keep his cover and protect his family at the same time. Only issue? He’s now got to deal with trouble from mobsters, corrupt agents and the NYPD. So it’s a prison thriller, an undercover crime story and a conspiracy tale wrapped up neatly in one package.
The cast includes Joel Kinnaman (Suicide Squad) as Pete Koslow, Ana de Armas (Ballerina) as Sofia, Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl) as Wilcox, Common (John Wick: Chapter 2) as Grens, Clive Owen (Children of Men) as Montgomery, and Sam Spruell (A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms) as Slewitt.
How Successful Was ‘The Informer’?
The Informer was almost a total wipeout at the box office, although that’s not all its own fault, because its release was also badly hurt by timing and distribution issues. The reported budget isn’t even well known — IMDb lists it at around $60 million, while other box-office trackers focus more on its final grosses — but either way, the theatrical numbers were tiny. Reports state that the film closed at just $300,460 domestically and $3.37 million worldwide. That’s nowhere near enough to be considered a commercial success. Or anything.
Critically, it has a better reputation though. It has a fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and it seems to be the definition of “solid, not spectacular”. IMDb’s user score is also a respectable 6.6/10, which seems to sum it up nicely. It was a decent, sturdy thriller, but not exactly a lost masterpiece.
The film was written by Andrea Di Stefano, Rowan Joffe, and Matt Cook, with producers including Basil Iwanyk, Erica Lee, Robert Jones, James Harris, and Mark Lane. The Informer is streaming now on Starz.