Jeremy Renner made a splash in the Oscar-winning Hurt Locker. After equally talented performances in supporting roles in American Hustle and The Immigrant, he’s back in a starring role in the well-intentioned, occasionally stirring Kill The Messenger. Renner plays Gary Webb, a journalist with the minor-league newspaper The San Jose Mercury News in 1996. Iran/Contra, around a decade earlier, is still fresh in the minds of many who feel Ronald Reagan severely overstepped his bounds. To refresh your memory, the Reagan administration was caught red-handed covertly selling arms to Iran to fund the Nicaraguan Contras in their effort to overthrow the democratically elected, but left-leaning Nicaraguan government. Where there’s smoke there’s often a far-worse fire.
Webb uncovers an even more insidious clandestine plot to fund The Contras. Using sources including a former drug pin (Andy Garcia) inside a Nicaraguan prison, Webb finds evidence The CIA either looked the other way or was actually involved in the selling of the newly emerging drug, crack cocaine, to unsuspecting victims in American ghettos. Monies were also turned over to the Contras. When the story breaks, California Representative Maxine Waters and other civil rights leaders go ballistic. Equally peeved for entirely different reasons are the CIA, who call in Webb for a little talk, and many in the establishment media, who felt scooped by a nobody on a huge story.
Kill The Messenger, based on Webb’s book, Dark Alliance, is largely about the taking down of a reporter. Director Michael Cuesta,who has directed episodes of the television series, Homeland, is good at getting close-up to creepily eerie developments. Shady men show up snooping around Webb’s house, The Washington Post goes after the accuracy of his story, and even his own wife (Rosemarie De Witt) questions his willingness to persevere despite enormous pressure. His own editors finally back down and retract a major portion of the story. Meanwhile, for every obstacle presented, Webb gains a level of intensity. Reassigned to what is the equivalent of a journalistic Siberia at a small town newspaper, Webb keeps on keeping on. Pressed to find a CIA source to support his allegations, Webb is surprised to find a mysterious Ray Liotta pop up in the motel room that Webb has been keeping himself. He walks in like he’s from a whole other movie but the scene, surprisingly, refrains from becoming ridiculous.
The film’s final scene of Webb standing at a lecturn in front of his peers ready to accept a journalism prize, seems discordant with the turn of events between Webb and his newspaper. It feels forced and Hollywood-blow up. Kill The Messenger’s coda provides a sad return to reality: Webb committed suicide in 2004. I have no idea if he used the same gun he pulled out to fire a warning shot at those shady guys lurking outside his house after his story broke.