Movie Review: Kill the Messenger (2014)

Jeremy Renner’s first production starring himself as the main patrogonist follows the story of journalist Gary Webb (Jeremy Renner) who wrote a three part investigative series named Dark Alliance in 1998 which stated the involvement of CIA in supporting cocaine trafficking in US.

The film starts with newspaper headlines and news flashes all over the screen focusing on drug abuse in America. Then the film comes to the timeline of 1996 when Gary Webb, a successful journalist leading a happy life with his wife and three children is at the moment working on the case of so called drug dealers being accused of narcotics dealing falling victim to the Government for convicting them and seizing their properties without any evidence of their illegal trade. The movie without wasting much time straightly comes to its objective when Gary receives a call from a lady informing him about her boyfriend who sold drugs for the Government. Gary first disbelieves but then collects the possible evidence from her. With further investigation and a series of testimonies from the linked people including “Freeway” Rick Ross (Michael K. Williams), Danilo Blandon (Yul Vazquez) and Norwin Menesis (Andy García) etc he finds out that cocaine was brought into US and CIA was encouraging it to support in raising funds for the ongoing Contra war. 

Gary Webb starts suspecting himself being followed and is also warned by the agents not to go any further with the investigation and his story but he writes the book anyway naming it ‘Dark Alliance’, which gets published in San Jose Mercury News in August 1996.

 The media under the govt. influence has somewhat unexpected response showcasing it to be fabricated and fictional for not having any real source or evidence from CIA itself. Moreover the real trouble starts when Gary finds out that he and his family being spied on at night. In order to keep his family out of all this trouble he leaves his home and moves to a motel alone. The situation gets worsened when he finds out that all the people he had earned the testimony from are either missing or have changed their statements claiming to have never met him. Later on Gary decides to resign from San Jose Mercury News when they declare that they made a mistake that they did not had enough proof that the top CIA officials knew about the cocaine trafficking. 

The film ends with Gary receiving Journalist of the year award and handing over the resignation letter to his editor. The end credits reveal that Gary Webb was never able to earn a living as a journalist and was later found dead with two gunshot wounds to his head, the court ruled it as suicide.

The film has a brilliant cinematography; shot in documentary style at some instances, makes it a very convincing one. Michael Cuesta’s direction for this biographical movie is very appropriate. Most importantly with most of the realistic movies, no matter how great and original they are I find them sometimes irritatingly slow (except for Martin Scorcese films) and before watching this movie, this is the same issue I feared but the film had the right speed for it’s screenplay. Jeremy Renner does a very natural job as Gary Webb. He had both, the right expression to portray the various moods and at the same time the desired style that fits best to the role. This is also one of those few movies that a movie geek would remember for a lifetime.