Kill the Messenger

Kill the Messenger (15)

USA 2014 112 mins  Dir: Michael Cuesta  Starring: Jeremy Renner, Andy Garcia, Michael Sheen, Ray Liotta, Robert Patrick, Jena Sims, Michael Kenneth Williams, Rosemarie DeWitt, Paz Vega

“You have no idea what you’re getting into.” Under a little-known Hollywood by-law, every David and Goliath conspiracy thriller must include this line, which is generally delivered with a hint of menace. Our very own Michael Sheen gets to do the honours here. “Some stories are just too true to tell,” adds Sheen’s Washington insider for good measure. Pitched somewhere between All the President’s Men, State of Play and Fair Game, Homeland producer/director Michael Cuesta’s drama has the misfortune to feel very familiar in its construction despite being based on the extraordinary true story of the how the CIA secretly facilitated a crack cocaine epidemic among urban black Americans to fund anti-communist contras in Nicaragua.

It’s 1996 and an astonishing story falls into the lap of lowly San Jose Mercury News hack Gary Webb (Renner). He’s approached by alluring, manipulative drug trafficker’s moll Coral (Vega), who presents him with a grand jury transcript that was accidentally produced during disclosure. This contains the revelation that the CIA allowed South Central LA to be flooded with crack cocaine in order to finance its anti-commie adventures in Central America. Tenacious Webb’s investigation leads him to LA drug dealer Ricky Ross (Williams), who claims he had to rent an apartment to store his mountains of cash in floor-to-ceiling piles and could barely keep up with supply. “You mean demand,” corrects Webb. “No I mean supply,” replies Ross. “It was raining coke.” When a high-profile prosecution is dropped to prevent the CIA connection becoming public knowledge, Webb knows he’s onto something big and heads to Nicaragua to flesh out his story.

Some critics have argued that this is all rather old hat in the age of Wikileaks. It’s certainly true that when Oliver North’s name is mentioned, our hero has to ask “The Oliver North?” to give younger members of the audience time to discreetly Google him on their smartphones. But the aftermath of this decidedly old-school exclusive is as relevant today as it was in the pre-internet era. The Agency sets out to harass and discredit our hero, issuing veiled threats (“We wouldn’t allow anything to happen to your children”) and making him the focus of the story, aided and abetted by bigger papers who are embarrassed at having been scooped. Meanwhile, his intimidated editors crumble.

Whenever the investigation needs chivvying along a bit, another shadowy informant pops up conveniently, usually in the form of a major league character actor, to supply an additional piece of the puzzle or a Big Picture overview, a la Donald Sutherland in JFK. But although the plot wheels grind a little on occasion, Hurt Locker star Jeremy Renner holds the attention as a flawed, suitably outraged everyhack crusader. Webb wound up writing stories about constipated police horses and eventually committed suicide, though the film doesn’t dwell on this. Nor, as its critics have been quick to point out, does it choose to explore too closely whether he made any errors in his original expose. But this was one jaw-dropping conspiracy that turned out not to be a figment of some lizard-crazed nutjob’s imagination, which helps Cuesta’s engrossing film over the occasional narrative hump.