The message is bleak, but the story is an eff ective one
Frank Capra spent his career romanticizing the role of the journalist in American film. He gave us Clark Gable as the lying rogue of a reporter in It Happened One Night, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in The Power of the Press and Loretta Young as Gallagher, just one of the guys puffing away in the newsroom in Platinum Blonde.
These were not always the most flattering portrayals of people, but the image of the hard- boiled reporter with a press badge and a steno pad always proved enough to keep politicians honest and citizens aware of government abuse.
And for this, journalists were celebrated in pop culture. Yet, the reality of the modern era looks much different from the flickering black and whites of the Golden Age.
And nothing tells the sad truth of the full carriage shift like the story of Gary Webb. A news reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, Webb obtained documents that suggested a relationship between drug lords in Latin America, the American government and Oliver North’s desire to fund rebels in Iran.
In real terms, he broke the Iran- Contra scandal with his story Dark Alliance and for a brief moment in time, he was hailed as the heir to Woodward and Bernstein. Then, when the government fought back with a canon full of official denial, his paper threw Webb under the bus.
Kill the Messenger is his story. Based on Webb’s own book, and played by Jeremy Renner ( The Hurt Locker), the movie gives us every dimension of the larger media landscape through the eyes of one soldier stuck on the battlefield alone.
Director Michael Cuesta ( Homeland) seduces us through heroic expectation, making us believe we’re going to watch a thriller in the vein of All the President’s Men, because that’s how it begins.
We watch Webb go to work at the bureau. He’s got pride in his profession, and a step full of purpose. And with his tattered canvas bag and his unironed shirts, Renner makes a believable member of the scribe tribe. Through his mix of swagger and lingering insecurity, he also finds the ink- stained soul of the Everyman journo — all of which makes the first act such a fun ride, especially since so much of the story has never been told.
Cuesta gives us the Wood-ward-Bernstein moment where the story breaks, but it’s over all too fast.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead is given the role of the spineless editor — plucky at first, but a corporate doormat by the final scenes. Rosemarie DeWitt plays the loyal but emotionally gelatinous wife who doesn’t understand why her husband is so upset by the stuff at work, and Michael Sheen plays the source who verifies his story and explains what will eventually happen to Webb: He will be erased, discredited and destroyed because he is just an individual, not an institution.
The movie explores this crucial difference, and unlike the best of Capra, we don’t get to watch the little guy take down Goliath. We watch the little guy take down Goliath, then get steamrolled.
It’s frustrating, and just a little soul- crushing to witness, which is the biggest problem facing Cuesta’s movie because we’re so used to this genre serving up a six- pack of justice with a side of Erin Brockovich. This movie shows us second- guessing bosses in the boardroom and a reporter hung out to dry for doing his job well.
The message is bleak, depressing and all too true, but killing the messenger — in this case — only reaffirms the underlying disease.