Grade: B-
Fittingly enough, “Kill the Messenger” is a movie that tells an earth-shattering story but will never get the credit it’s due, because it’s told just a little too sloppily.
“Kill the Messenger,” based on a true story, is the tale of Gary Webb, an investigative journalist who uncovers evidence that the U.S. government had colluded with drug lords, bringing cocaine into the country to pay to arm rebels in Nicaragua.
At the heart of this story is Webb, played by Jeremy Renner, a role in which he positively shines. He’s a ballsy, fun, cavalier journalist, husband and father to three.
The story is absolutely brilliant. As a journalist myself, it hit close to home — and to see the U.S. government treat its country’s journalists like it treated Webb was shocking.
Renner expertly crafts his character both in Webb’s moments as a heroic journalist and vulnerable man breaking under pressure.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly where this movie’s problems lay.
The writing is pretty good. Nothing in the dialogue ever caused me to raise my eyebrows.
The supporting cast does a fine job, including Webb’s wife, Sue, played by Rosemarie DeWitt, and his boss, Jerry Ceppos, played by Oliver Platt.
It’s all just kind of forgettable, which is definitely not something that should be said about a story this big and this important.
It’s not that it’s told poorly, it’s just that it’s told without much motivation.
A film like this has Oscars written all over it, but the team behind “Kill the Messenger” phoned it in just a little bit and just enough to keep it out of the upper echelons of historically vital biopics.
Moments of cinematographic brilliance are few and far between, and I don’t think I really felt the anxiety and tension I was supposed to.
Some strange choices were made in terms of which pieces of the story to highlight. For example, his actual reporting of the “Dark Alliance” story that took the entire country by storm took a strangely short amount of time.
I’m picking “Kill the Messenger” apart just because I know the potential it had. This is a very good movie by almost all means, but it could have been so much more.
