Informers, The

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Has an air of detachment and sadness, enhanced by the movie's being set a full quarter century ago.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

If The Informers doesn't sound to you like a pleasant time at the movies, you are right. To repeat: dread, despair and doom. It is often however repulsively fascinating and has been directed by Gregor Jordan as a soap opera from hell, with good sets and costumes.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray

Though The Informers is by no means great--nor wholly true to the vision of Ellis, who co-wrote the screenplay with Nicholas Jarecki--moments sprinkled throughout the film capture Ellis' particular mix of flip yuppie satire and lived-in paranoia better than any big-screen version of his work to date.

The Hollywood Reporter Stephen Farber

One long wallow in sordidness.

Variety Rob Nelson

The film is banal by obvious intent. The only question, as with other Ellis adaptations including "American Psycho," is whether auds will appreciate the aggressively shallow depiction of an aggressively shallow milieu, or mistake the pic's implicit critique for the crime itself.

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

This is one of those "Crash"-style pictures with interwoven narrative strands. The problem here is that most of the strands wind up little more than loose ends.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Another tale of Tinseltown drugs, sex and excess - has transferred itself to the screen with mind-boggling, laugh-inciting horribleness.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The Informers is nihilism for nihilism's sake; a bleak and borderline-unwatchable collage of misanthropes, self-absorbed a**holes, and pathetic weaklings as they struggle to move forward during the early 1980s in Los Angeles.

Charlotte Observer Roger Moore

It's a terrible muddle unless you take it as a satire on the Age of Ellis, the Jacqueline Susann for that Flock of Seagulls era. That way, the unintentional laughs seem almost ironic.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Here's what is bad: this movie.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

You come away with only the memory of Christie, the film's perfect California blonde, lying insensate on the beach in the final ravages of AIDS - a potent and frightening image the rest of The Informers can't live up to.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Shocking is the fact that three highly regarded actors -- Kim Basinger, Mickey Rourke and Billy Bob Thornton -- chose to star in this dreadful film.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

This one's a certifiable soul-sucker, dining out on its characters' venalities while wagging a finger at the horror, the horror.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

Spoiler alert: It can leave you feeling kind of empty and sad! It's pretty, icky and boring all at once, and feels like nothing so much as an unusually depressing Ban du Soleil commercial.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

An awful film about an awful time.

TV Guide Perry Seibert

So, in essence, The Informers fails precisely because we never believe these lost souls were ever human enough to have had a soul to lose in the first place.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Ellis' stamp is immediately apparent, from the absurdly vapid characters to the undercurrent of barely repressed anger.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Nearly every time Mr. Jordan, working from a script by Mr. Ellis and Nicholas Jarecki, tries for similar effects, he goes badly awry, so that you snicker when the movie is trying to be poignant and groan when it aims to make a joke.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

A tale of absolute self-absorption and unconscious revelation.

Los Angeles Times Robert Abele

Conjures up plenty of debauched tableaux with its photogenic, jaded showbiz denizens and hangers-on, but nary a reason for existing.

Washington Post John Anderson

A nihilistic, narcissistic, knuckleheaded move about nihilistic, narcissistic knuckleheads, The Informers might have been an interesting exercise in satire, if it only had a sense of humor. Which it doesn't. You'll need one, though, after forking over 10 bucks to see it.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

One of the worst movies of this or any year.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

The top-line talent, particularly Thornton and Rourke, do manage to hold our attention with idiosyncratic performances, but most of the others are a jumble of fair-haired, disaffected boys.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Repulsive 80s flashback.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Tedious and tawdry.