Is Mark Whitacre a hero? Will a new motion picture that portrays a part of his life paint him as such?

As is generally the case, those questions will have to be answered by each individual who has an opinion and by each person who watches "The Informant" when it comes out next year.

The film, which documents Whitacre's role as a government operative while working as an Archer Daniels Midland Co. executive, concluded its filming in Decatur last weekend and is scheduled to finish its Midwest work this weekend.

There are some misconceptions about what Whitacre is and is not, and a few of these can be cleared up easily.

The first thing to remember is that Whitacre is the subject of this film, but it's not his story. Kurt Eichenwald wrote the book, and Steven Soderbergh is directing the film, with a screenplay by Scott Z. Burns. Their imprints will be seen in the film.

(Burns, by the way, was on set in Decatur, rewriting as the filming went along. Burns also wrote a scene to be filmed at the women's prison in north Decatur, a previously unplanned scene. And the screenplay is adapting to new Whitacre news - including, apparently, the Herald & Review's lengthy April 6 story - as the shooting continues.)

"The Informant" is being done without the input of some of the principals. Some people on either side of the case - the government and ADM - have never spoken on the record. There's no word from them about wiretaps and price-fixing and corporate fraud. Their vision of the story won't match what winds up on film.

A couple of Herald & Review letters to the editor take up both sides of the Whitacre issue in interesting (and diametrically opposed) manners. One talks about what wonderful people the Whitacres were, and the other says Whitacre shouldn't be glorified.

Can't both be true? Can the family have been wonderful AND can Whitacre not be glorified?

A friend recently e-mailed a question: "Do you think Whitacre gets that the movie may not portray him in the most flattering light?" And my answer is, "Yeah, probably."

In no way does my brief stretch of conversations with Whitacre last month make me an expert on the man, what makes him tick and his veracity. However, he seemed sincere in his willingness to take measure of his actions.

Among his key quotes:

"I hope most people would have handled it differently than me."

"I definitely lost my moral compass."

"Maybe people can learn from my story. I made a lot of mistakes. But I'm not going to do any finger-pointing. It was my own fault."

There's nothing apparent in the production of the film to indicate it's making a hero of Whitacre, or that it's keeping clear of some of the more controversial aspects of what was going on in his life at the time.

This is part of what makes Whitacre's story so confusing. On one hand, he's working as an informant for the FBI, helping build the largest price-fixing case in history against ADM. On the other, in a move Whitacre says was designed because he feared he'd be tossed aside once the FBI had what it wanted from him, he stepped up his embezzling.

Whitacre set up a fictitious offshore company, which sent ADM a faked invoice, and he then approved the bills being paid. As the time for the raid on ADM's corporate offices approached, FBI agents offered Whitacre the opportunity to come clean on any of his transgressions.

He declined to confess to anything, which made bedlam of the ensuing months in court. Price-fixing, embezzlement, lying to the FBI - it created a chaotic jumble that made Whitacre conclude, "I'm not sure anybody won. The whole case was a mess."

That's not a very heroic ending to Whitacre's ADM life. Yet to focus on that ending would be to ignore the service Whitacre did for almost three years, wearing recording equipment and building an antitrust case against Decatur's largest employer.

You don't have to take my word for it. Take the word of the FBI agent who headed up the investigation at the beginning, Dean Paisley.

"Without him, the biggest antitrust case we've ever had would never have been," said Paisley, who has since retired. And he went further in his praise of Whitacre.

"Had it not been for the fraud conviction," Paisley said, "he would be a national hero. Well, he is a national hero."

If an FBI agent says that, it's good enough for me.

We all, of course, make our own decisions on whom and how much to forgive for selected transgressions. It just seems interesting that Whitacre's serving eight years and eight months in prison isn't enough punishment for some observers, while others' crimes of significant severity are forgiven simply because they were charming enough to apologize in the right way or the news cycle treated their wrongdoing in a more sympathetic fashion.

Those are just a few things to remember when the movie comes out next March.

Tim Cain can be reached at timcain@herald-review.com or 421-6908.