Kill the Messenger

So I saw Kill the Messenger, and it was all right.  It's a movie about Gary Webb, a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News played by Jeremy Renner. Back in the mid-90s Webb wrote a series of articles about the CIA overseeing the importation so cocaine into the U.S. to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. The movie follows Webb through learning about and researching the story, followed by his fall and eventual disgrace at the hands of the media and government (Sorry, I usually don't do a ton of synopses in these reviews but I wasn't that familiar with the movie or the story it's about when I went to see it so I thought I'd share).

The movie plays out along the usual "fall from grace" story line. In the first half of the movie we see what a dogged and determined reporter Webb is as he hunts down leads and writes the story. Once the story is published and to universal acclaim it's basically a countdown until the other shoe drops and everything goes bad.

I was a little surprised by the lack real action in this movie. While there are often parts where Webb is threatened or things are implied by members of the government, For the most part it seems content to just let Webb get really paranoid and rely on the fact that whenever someone starts saying things about the CIA being out to get them they sound extremely crazy.  In the end the key to this movie is Jeremy Renner's performance, because there isn't a ton going on beyond how he reacts to any given situation. While I think he did a good job of conveying the emotional journey his character goes through, there isn't enough going on besides that. An interesting little movie that might be worth your time if you're interested in the subject matter, but not much else.