By LINDSEY SCHIBELHUT, Staff Reporter.
Directed by Michael Cuesta and released in 2014, “Kill the Messenger” is based on the 2006 book “Kill the Messenger” by Nick Schou. It tells the true story of Pulitzer prize winning journalist Gary Webb and “Dark Alliance,” the 1996 article series he wrote. The series would later blow the CIA run Iran-Contra drug smuggling cover-up wide open.
Jeremy Renner (“The Hurt Locker,” “The Avengers,” “The Bourne Legacy”) plays Gary Webb, in this political thriller. Along with Renner, Rosemarie DeWitt (Susan Webb), Ray Liotta (John Cullen), Barry Pepper (Russell Dodsen), Michael Sheen (Fred Well), Andy Garcia (Norwin Meneses), Michael K. Williams (“Freeway” Rick Ross), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Anna Simmons), Oliver Platt (Jerry Ceppos) and Paz Vega (Coral Baca), round out the rest of the cast.
Let’s start with the positive elements of the movie. Jeremy Renner did an amazing job at portraying Gary Webb. He showed Webb as the passionate, get down to the truth, type of reporter he was. You felt that in the moments when his newspaper editor and others were doubting his story and he had to defend himself against the negative press which started to arise. The audience could also see the love he had for his family, when government officials began to threaten them, and he wouldn’t back down from getting the truth out.
One of my first complaints with the film is the casting of Paz Vega to play Coral Baca. Coral is the woman who kept trying to contact Webb to tell him about the drug smuggling in the first place. When first introduced to her character, I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or not. For a majority of her interactions with Webb she is dressed provocatively and giving him bedroom eyes, which detracts from the seriousness of the nature of the story. Granted maybe this is how the actual woman acted in real life, I however, can’t confirm this. It annoyed me because I thought it took away from the seriousness of the topic.
My second complaint is the pacing of the movie. They don’t break up the film to showcase the time it took Webb to write and publish the entire “Dark Alliance” series. The impression you get from the movie is that the series was published in a short amount of time. It took Webb roughly a year to get all of the puzzle pieces together for this piece. Not to mention the countless hours he spent sifting through all of the court documents and audio related to the case.
Overall, I would say this movie was okay. For viewers who haven’t read the books “Dark Alliance” or “Kill the Messenger” they will only be getting a brief overview of events. For people who have read the books, they will be able to pick out certain elements of which they read. However, they will walk away with the feeling that the movie could have told a lot more, but didn’t. The movie is either going to solidify what people have read or it should encourage those who haven’t to find out more and read the series.
“Kill the Messenger” is definitely worth checking out on DVD despite some of the above complaints. The film showcases how hard Webb worked on the “Dark Alliance” series and how passionate he was about seeking the truth about this government cover-up and making sure all of the facts were correct. Sadly, this series ruined the rest of his journalism career and he never got recognition he deserved for the reporting of it. In 2004, at the age of 59, Webb died of what is reported to be a suicide.
