Kill the Messenger
Directed by: Michael Cuesta
Written by: Peter Landesman - Based on the book "Dark Alliance" by Gary Webb and "Kill the Messenger" by Nick Schau
Starring: Jeremy Renner, Robert Patrick, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Lucas Hedges, Rosemarie DeWitt, Paz Vega, Barry Pepper, Tim Blake Nelson, Michael Kenneth Williams, Oliver Platt, Andy Garcia, Michael Sheen, Gil Bellows, Richard Schiff, Ray Liotta
Biography/Crime/Drama/Mystery/Thriller - 112 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 6 Oct 2014
Written by: Peter Landesman - Based on the book "Dark Alliance" by Gary Webb and "Kill the Messenger" by Nick Schau
Starring: Jeremy Renner, Robert Patrick, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Lucas Hedges, Rosemarie DeWitt, Paz Vega, Barry Pepper, Tim Blake Nelson, Michael Kenneth Williams, Oliver Platt, Andy Garcia, Michael Sheen, Gil Bellows, Richard Schiff, Ray Liotta
Biography/Crime/Drama/Mystery/Thriller - 112 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 6 Oct 2014
Kill the Messenger is a tale of two halves. The first half is a taut political thriller full of shadowy government secrets and dogged investigative journalism. The second half is more straightforward drama as the walls around a man’s professional and personal life collapse in on him. The first half is one of the more effective thrillers of the year with edge of your seat suspense until the second half’s tone shift transitions the film from high gear cruising in the left lane to stuck in traffic. Journalist Gary Webb’s story must be told and culpable parties including the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S.’s major newspapers should be held to account for their shifty activities, but Kill the Messenger loses so much steam along the way it limps over the finish line.
Jeremy Renner (2013’s American Hustle) plays a striking and impactful Gary Webb, a tireless truth pursuer. The deeper he digs and the more secrets he unearths is directly proportional to both the professional and personal costs on his career and family. His investigation takes all of our attention because it moves quick and there are a large amount of characters involved with accusations the CIA worked with cocaine smugglers to fund Nicaraguan rebels. The side effect? The crack cocaine epidemic. Renner walks around South Central L.A. and witnesses a war zone. The folks on the street are armed to the teeth peddling the product which swooped into town in epidemic proportions in the ‘80s. The devastation wrought by the drug’s supply is incalculable. How did the local suppliers receive so much product so fast? Some say the U.S. intelligence community had a hand in it because they siphoned off a portion of the profits to fund a Central American civil war.
Jeremy Renner (2013’s American Hustle) plays a striking and impactful Gary Webb, a tireless truth pursuer. The deeper he digs and the more secrets he unearths is directly proportional to both the professional and personal costs on his career and family. His investigation takes all of our attention because it moves quick and there are a large amount of characters involved with accusations the CIA worked with cocaine smugglers to fund Nicaraguan rebels. The side effect? The crack cocaine epidemic. Renner walks around South Central L.A. and witnesses a war zone. The folks on the street are armed to the teeth peddling the product which swooped into town in epidemic proportions in the ‘80s. The devastation wrought by the drug’s supply is incalculable. How did the local suppliers receive so much product so fast? Some say the U.S. intelligence community had a hand in it because they siphoned off a portion of the profits to fund a Central American civil war.
Jealous big time reporters with Washington and international connections did not appreciate being scooped by the backwater, second-tier San Jose Mercury News. They misrepresented and outright lied about Webb’s accusations. Webb never said the CIA drugged the African-American community. The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times all come off looking very bad here.
The film’s frenetic energy and sprinting pace (at least in the first half) is a credit to Peter Landesman’s script which pushes and prods us forward through a dense jungle of detail. Landesman based his work on Nick Schou’s Kill the Messenger, Gary Webb’s Dark Alliance, and interviews from his own research on the topic. Webb’s original “Dark Alliance” articles show a very early print and online simultaneous publish including links to sources and references. When the going got tough though, including both threats from dark-suited, sunglass-wearing at night feds and from his fellow newspaper men, the editors and big bosses at the San Jose Mercury News wilted and hung Gary Webb out to dry. Oliver Platt (2011’s The Oranges) and Mary Elizabeth Winstead (2013’s A Good Day to Die Hard) play Gary’s spineless editors trying their best to duck and cover.
Kill the Messenger is not a reminder of the CIA’s clandestine involvement with Nicaraguan rebels and the drug trade; it is about the journalist, his character, his relationship with his family, and his editors. Writer Peter Landesman says it best, “…The newspapers and individuals in and out of government going after Gary exposed the power of a conspiracy of mediocrity to destroy professional exceptionalism and personal dedication.” Director Michael Cuesta chose to make the film subjective. This is Gary’s point of view, his opinions, his fight. Cinematographer Sean Bobbitt chose to shoot on film which works well with the 1996 pre-digital mania setting.
It’s tough to watch Gary Webb’s life fall apart through the result of professional rivalries and double talking government figures. It also does not make for riveting filmmaking. We saw examples of that in the first half as Gary hopped from jail cells to courtrooms to Central America. Two halves of strikingly different tone does not make a coherent film. The subject remains strong enough to recommend but Kill the Messenger is too choppy to rank as one of the harder hitting political thrillers.
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