Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
A reporter becomes the target of a vicious smear campaign that drives him to the point of suicide after he exposes the CIA's role in arming Contra rebels in Nicaragua and importing cocaine into California. Based on the true story of journalist Gary Webb.
Kill the Messenger is a solid investigative journalism thriller anchored by a genuinely committed performance from Jeremy Renner, who carries the film through its more procedural stretches. The plot follows the true story of Gary Webb with reasonable fidelity and dramatic momentum, though it sometimes feels compressed and conventional in its conspiracy-thriller beats. Cinematography is competent but unremarkable, functional rather than distinctive. Novelty is moderate — the investigative journalism genre is well-worn (All the President's Men casts a long shadow), and while the specific CIA-Contra-crack cocaine story is compelling and underexplored in cinema, the film's execution doesn't reinvent the wheel. The ending, depicting Webb's tragic decline and death, is affecting but somewhat rushed, not fully doing justice to the complexity of his fall.