The life of a newsman, with very few exceptions, is decidedly unglamorous. For every Woodward and/or Bernstein, there are 1,000 journalists trudging through the newsroom trenches, covering stories they never imagined they’d be sinking their sharpened teeth into as fresh-faced, optimistic writers looking to change the world. But every now and then, a story so hot and controversial comes along and the stars align and for a motivated writer to get a scoop or find a source that will launch him or her to fame … and maybe do some good as well. The cinema loves these kinds of stories. Films like All the President’s Men, The Parallax View and The Insider are a few examples. And now Kill the Messenger, an earnest tale about a journalist who uncovered a great story and paid the price, falls squarely into this camp.
Kill the Messenger tells the story of real-life journalist Gary Webb, who in 1996, while working for The San Jose Mercury News, uncovered a twisted tale linking the CIA to the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s. Very simply put, Webb’s reporting alleged that the CIA looked the other way as Nicaraguan rebels funneled massive amounts of coke into the U.S. in order to fund the Contras in their home country. Webb, played by the pug-faced and always reliable Jeremy Renner, travels from California to D.C. to Nicaraguan jails to uncover the story, which he stumbles upon when a drug dealer’s moll (Paz Vega) gives him a Grand Jury transcript that was mistakenly released. After the story breaks, Webb is hailed as a journalistic hero. But it isn’t long before the CIA and bigger, more establishment papers (or so the film posits) like The Washington Post question his reporting and sources, eventually driving him from his beloved profession. In 2004, the real Gary Webb was found in his apartment with gunshot wounds to his head, a suspected suicide.
While the film ends before his death, the title card announcing it implicitly urges you to question whether it was indeed a suicide or something more sinister. Indeed, Kill the Messenger is layered with levels of paranoia as Webb falls deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. This film seems to have been a passion project for Renner, who is also a producer. He plays Webb as a faulted, even damaged character who has his share of personal problems. He moved his family from Ohio to California after an affair that ended very badly, a memory that still makes his wife (Rosemarie DeWitt) flinch. But clearly Webb is the hero here, refusing to trade in his idealism at the urging of his editors when is feet are put to the flames. In his world, the truth will always win … until it doesn’t.