Kill the Messenger, directed by Michael Cuesta, covers real-life journalist Gary Webb’s struggle in the mid-90’s to expose the CIA for its alleged importation of cocaine into the United States to support Nicaraguan rebels fighting a communist regime during the Reagan era. At its best, it smells of All the President’s Men. One man who’s brave enough to ask questions and an investigation trail running far deeper than anticipated are enjoyable elements in the script, a worthy testament to the subject that’s got some entertainment value as well. The film’s engaging enough to get us interested that much, at least for the ten to twenty minutes it fills with the classic taking-on-the-system vibe. The surface still brings the story in focus to our attention (a fascinating one that everyone should be aware of), but there’s not much to the movie under that shell. It builds upward without working in, and when it tries late in its 112 minutes, too late, to reverse its direction, it doesn’t feel as juicy as some of the earlier scenes.
The gears are turning from the beginning. It’s an eager film. Webb’s small newspaper company is thirsty for another hit story when he gets info of an alleged crack dealer who’s been sold drugs to by a government informant. By the way, the movie struggles with this setup. The introduction means to get us calm before the storm, but it doesn’t leave us with enough time to settle in. The dialogue doesn’t really help here either. All of the words sound like newspaper headlines and don’t feel natural at all, making us think harder than we need to. The script trips over itself when it tries to be snappy.
The film unwraps just like the investigation does and actually gets interesting at a point. It was during this portion where I second guessed my thoughts about the movie. It really does clean up when Webb goes from interview to interview, pressure building with each step. We feel like we’re finding things out, and it’s cool.
There’s way too strong of a build-up here, however, and maybe if it was smaller and more gradual, we wouldn’t notice the drop-off at the rough halfway point as big as it is. There’s not even a taper.
Once Webb realizes he’s followed this case to the top, there’s really nowhere else for the movie to go except have our reporter defend his claims and lock himself up against nozy feds. It’s supposed to be as eerie as before, but when we’ve come to know Webb as a wisecracking verbal MacGyver who’s weaved through black marker documents, his paranoid self just seems contradictory. We even see Webb try to resolve family issues, but the movie hasn’t done enough to make us care about that either.
As a result, the plot puts all the meaty stuff on the table too early and becomes a thin wishy-washy analysis on corrupt national security that the style, which wavers quite a bit, can’t interpret right.
Nobody’s saying that Mr. Webb and his findings, glossed over in retrospective of the 80’s, shouldn’t be recognized. The movie does that, quite rightly. Nevertheless, it doesn’t do more than dip its toes in the subject, which feels like it should be a lot more complicated than it seems. We’ll have to do some further investigations of our own.
