Kill The Messenger: the Gary Webb story has holes but Renner's performance still sticks – review

He has a sturdy build, a clear moral compass, wears cool sunglasses and rides a vintage motorcycle. Everything about Jeremy Renner’s portrayal of journalist Gary Webb in Kill the Messenger readies a conditioned moviegoer to expect him to kick ass in the name of justice. But this is a movie for grownups, so The Avengers’ Hawkeye puts down the bow and arrow and picks up his pen – or more specifically his mid-90s desktop mouse – and uses his brain instead of his brawn.

Webb was the relatively small potatoes reporter at the San Jose Mercury News whose fearlessness and determination helped him break an amazing story, and Renner gives this role everything he’s got.

As a middle schooler in the 80s, I befriended some older kids who read ‘zines and listened to the Clash and wore jackets with tiny pins on them like Rick from the Young Ones. One such pin read CIA: Cocaine Import Agency. Even suburban twerps from New Jersey suspected that the government was pumping crack into the inner cities and using the cash to fund anti-communist Nicaraguan militias. There was never any proof of this – at least not then, but a decade later Gary Webb connected many of the dots in a series of articles that, at first, had him hailed as the next Woodward and Bernstein, but that’s only the first half of the story. The second part, and, frankly, the more interesting part, shows how forces conspired to bury the story.

“Some stories are too true to tell,” warns Michael Sheen as the DC insider beside a reflecting pool – where all movies are forced by law to shoot the scene where a DC insider warns reporters they are in too deep. But Webb won’t be waved away. Not because he has an anti-government radical agenda, but because he’s still naïve enough to think that a journalist owes his first duty to the truth.

After the initial splash of success comes the backlash. The CIA refutes every claim (naturally) and even do a little psy-ops on him. But the CIA doesn’t have to destroy Webb when his so-called colleagues are there to do the job.

Bigger papers like the Washington Post are humiliated that they got scooped by a pipsqueak outlet like the San Jose Mercury News, and with the aid of the CIA’s mouthpiece they commence with the policy of CYA (Cover Your Ass). By tearing Webb’s story apart (and, by extension, Webb himself) the mainstream press can sweep all this under the rug.

It’s a great story that lends itself to some striking scenes. Yet the film in total – if I may paraphrase Webb’s critics – has a number of holes. Its use of newsy exposition montage is deplorable (the pre-title sequence is exhausting) and a number of characters just drop in to shove the plot along to its next checkpoint.

Much of the screenplay feels more like a reporter’s video game than drama. Director Michael Cuesta (best known for helming cable shows like Homeland and Dexter) makes a few choices that aren’t exactly what you’d call subtle. He’s got Barry Pepper as the sleazy government operative and Michael Kenneth Williams as the drug dealer primed with bon mots. And when Webb sits down to actually bang out his report he cranks The Clash’s “Know Your Rights.” (Those pin-wearing chums from school would be proud.) When Webb gives a rousing speech endorsing truth, justice and the American way at the film’s conclusion, he’s at a banquet and the light off the back curtain frames him with a golden halo.

And yet what Renner’s selling still sticks, because he’s just that sympathetic (and, of course, on the right side of the issues.) I remember when the Webb story broke and then I also remember people shoo-ing it away. What I didn’t remember was the aftermath. I won’t spoil too much of that here, but why I don’t remember it is clear: when evidence supporting Webb’s claim came to light, it had the misfortune of surfacing when the American media had its eyes exclusively on Bill Clinton’s zipper.

Kill the Messenger (like Webb) is clear about the line between fact and conjecture – but the facts alone make this an “issue film” worth seeing.