KILL THE MESSENGER (Michael Cuesta). 112 minutes. Opens Friday (October 10). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NNN
In 1996, San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb wrote a series of articles blaming the CIA for flooding America’s poorest black neighbourhoods with crack cocaine to launder money raised in the Iran-Contra scandal. The U.S. government responded by mounting a media campaign aimed at discrediting Webb, and by extension his reporting.
Kill The Messenger casts Jeremy Renner as Webb, and the actor’s spiky charisma is nicely suited to Webb’s mounting frustration as his story is challenged and reputation threatened.
But as good as Renner is, the structure of the script means a number of other key points in Webb’s life are either referenced clumsily (like his troubled marriage) or ignored in an even more awkward fashion, like the circumstances of his death in 2004. Instead, it peaks in the middle when Webb breaks the story – and then falls into a downward spiral as the story breaks him.
An excellent supporting cast – including Rosemarie DeWitt, Michael Sheen, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Andy Garcia – keeps the dialogue from sounding too expository, and Michael Cuesta’s nervous camera ensures there’s a sense of tension even when nothing much is happening.
It’s a well-packaged story, even if it never really catalyzes its indignation into something more resonant.
