The Informers Review

Few contemporary novelists have mapped the lives of the decadent, the privileged and the damaged quite so assiduously as Bret Easton Ellis. Alongside writers Jay McInerney and Chuck Palahniuk, Ellis shoved his fingers into the mainframe of 1980s and 1990s America and caught the strange electrical thrill of a culture charged up on narcissism and nihilism. The Informers, adapted by Ellis himself, is 'Beverly Hills 90210' remade as Sunset Blvd: a bleak, dirty and grimly sleazy enterprise full of beautiful but joyless screw-ups.

Set in early 1980s LA, the multi-stranded plot follows sexually precocious twentysomething couple Graham (Jon Foster) and Christie (Amber Heard) as their lives and the lives of Graham's parents William and Laura (Billy Bob Thornton and Kim Basinger) collide and collapse. Hollywood studio exec Thornton is having an affair with TV newscaster Cheryl (Winona Ryder). Laura is paying Graham's bisexual buddy Martin (Austin Nichols) for sex. Unhappy LA doorman Jack (Brad Renfro in his final role) gets caught up in a nasty child sex trafficking scheme implemented by his amoral uncle (Mickey Rourke). Binding these strands together - sort of - is shambolic English rock star Bryan Metro (Mel Raido), in town with his band The Informers but barely aware of who he is or what he's doing there.

Jordan's entire film has the jitters: everyone here is shaking and though the sex is definitely Hollywood sex - poor Amber Heard barely gets to the end of a scene with her clothes on - Aids is on the horizon, coke psychosis is gathering and LA's moral compass is way out of whack. "I need someone to tell me what's good," says a visibly vibrating Graham in the film's pivotal speech. "Someone to tell me what's bad." Embedded in the title is Ellis's ironic observation that informers - of the sort that enable people to make sensible decisions - are as vacant as the characters themselves.