Kill the Messenger as a movie is pretty good. It has a gripping plot (for the most part, more on that), and a fine cast lead by Jeremy Renner as Gary Webb. It does go to great lengths to paint Webb as a hero who wouldn’t back down from his story, making some omissions to really set him up as a martyr in the film. The real story isn’t so clear cut, but this is Hollywood after all.
For the young-ins out there, Gary Webb wrote a story in the mid 90’s alleging the Reagan administration turned a blind eye to cocaine coming into the country, allowing the dealers to sell it on our streets and then funnel money back to the Contra Nicaraguan resistance movement, in an effort to depose its Cuba- and Soviet-friendly government. Webb went so far as to say the CIA was personally involved in backing the drug lords, and were responsible for the increased crack cocaine problem in the US starting in the 80’s. There had been some rumors before Webb’s story, but his was the first and most recognizable to lay it all out in such detail.
The movie shows the timeline of what leads Webb to start his investigation, the whole process to print, and then the backlash as the government and other major news outlets pick his story apart. It portrays reasoning for the news backlash as a way to get even, because they missed the story themselves, which may or may not have been the case. His story certainly did make some wild allegations which were not always backed up with proof, but in the end it did open eyes and lead to investigations into the CIA. The movie slows down in the latter half after the excitement of the news story has all ready been told, and cinematically it is probably never a good idea to put the biggest bombshell of the movie in the first 30 minutes, but as a whole it is still good. Whether you think Webb was a strong ideal driven reporter who wouldn’t bend to the government, or an attention-seeking tabloid type that only got his facts from criminals facing hard time, he certainly did shake things up.
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