Kill the Messenger [DVD]

Ayo, check it out! If you ain't seen **Kill The Messenger** yet, you missin' out on some real raw, uncut drama. This flick's like a straight shot of adrenaline, and it's got the whole city talkin'. Here’s why you need to get hip to this movie ASAP.**Real Talk Storyline:**This ain't your average Hollywood fluff. **Kill The Messenger** is based on true events, my guy. We talkin' about Gary Webb, a journalist who digs deep and uncovers some serious dirt on the CIA. This dude's got guts, exposin' how they was mixed up in the crack game back in the day. The plot is thicker than the deepest dish pizza, and it's all facts, no cap.**Jeremy Renner’s Performance:**Yo, Jeremy Renner straight up brings it. He plays Gary Webb like he was born for the role. Renner's got that realness, showin' the highs and lows of a man who risks it all for the truth. You can feel every ounce of his struggle and determination. It's like watchin' a man on fire, burnin' through the lies to get to the truth.**Gritty and Raw:**This movie don’t hold back. It's gritty, raw, and hits you right in the gut. The way they show the pressure and threats Webb faces? Man, it’s like watchin' a lion in a den of wolves. You feel the tension, the danger, and the stakes gettin' higher with every scene. It's a wild ride from start to finish.**Chi-Town Vibes:**Even though this story ain't set in Chicago, it’s got that Chi-town hustle and grit all over it. The streets, the struggle, the fight to get the truth out there – it's something we all know too well. This movie’s got that heart, that grind, that makes you wanna stand up and clap.**Powerful Message:**This ain't just a movie, it's a message. It's about standin' up for what's right, no matter the cost. Webb's fight is a reminder that sometimes you gotta go against the grain to bring the truth to light. It's inspiring, and it makes you think about the power of the press and the price of truth.**Conclusion:****Kill The Messenger** is a straight-up masterpiece. It's a powerful, gripping thriller that shines a light on a dark chapter of American history. Jeremy Renner delivers a performance for the ages, and the story will keep you on the edge of your seat. If you're about that real-life drama, with a mix of danger and determination, this is your movie. Trust, you don’t wanna miss this. Cop that flick, sit back, and let it blow your mind. Highly recommended for anyone who loves a good fight for justice. Get on it, and thank me later.

This action movie was great, I was looking for a good movie my husband and I could enjoy at home, and this did not disappoint.

Gary Webb's story is crucial to understanding how much power and corruption is seated in the halls of American power. Sadly, nothing has changed. In fact, it has gotten only worse. I have a feeling there was more to the story, none of it good.

This is a good movie. True story, so it is even more interesting.

You can count on anything he stars in to be great. This did not disappoint. We need more dedicated journalists that aren't afraid to tell the truth.

**Warning: this review contains potential spoilers.**In August of 1996, the San Jose Mercury News broke “the big one”. That some elements in and around the Contras were mixed up in the drug trade wasn't exactly news: the Kerry Committee had exposed this to some degree back in the 80's. But the SJMN's series written by Gary Webb went much further. It stated that a “drug network” consisting of people involved with the Contras (i.e. Oscar Danilo Blandon and Norwin Meneses) were selling to LA crack kingpin “Freeway” Rick Ross and that this network “opened the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles”. Furthermore, it also stated that “the cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America”. The role the CIA played in this was left somewhat ambiguous by the series. While not explicitly saying the CIA made a calculated attempt to encourage this, it did make innuendos about it by doing such things as constantly referring to the Contras as the “CIA's army” and the logo of the series was a man smoking crack superimposed on the official seal of the CIA.The controversy that followed was one of the biggest in modern journalism. It led to papers and other outlets attacking the SJMN, and ultimately the SJMN backtracked on the story. Webb and the paper soon parted ways. Webb wrote the book 'Dark Alliance' some years later but became a pariah in journalism and never worked for a major paper again. Depressed over his inability to find work, Webb committed suicide in 2004.Now Webb is back. Played (superbly) by Jeremy Renner he is brought back to life in this film based not only on Webb's book (i.e. 'Dark Alliance') but also Nick Schou's book 'Kill The Messenger'. From everything I've read on the man, this film captured his passion and drive for what he did, but also how that passion created difficulties for him. You also get a sense of Webb the family man (i.e. how he worked to have a good relationship with his children and also the struggles in his marriage).But another aspect of this film are some issues with accuracy. Indeed, considering the beating the series took over accuracy....you would have thought the film would have kept the facts squeaky clean. But unfortunately: it doesn't.As it begins, Webb's tip that broke open the story led him to court to observe Blandon's testimony. In the film, Blandon testified that the CIA came to him and Meneses and asked them to raise money for the Contras (knowing that they dealt drugs). In actuality, Blandon said Meneses or Enrique Bermudez [in the grand jury transcript called "Enrique Ramunez"], it's not clear which one (Blandon's english wasn't clear at times), is who asked him. In either case, neither person amounts to representing the CIA: Meneses definitely was not, and Bermudez wasn't. And even if they were: Blandon himself later specifically denied that Bermudez asked him to raise money through drug smuggling. Meneses said the same thing. The SJMN quoted Bermudez (via Blandon) as saying the "ends justify the means". But Blandon himself said he didn't take that as meaning they should traffic in drugs.Also, Blandon's actual testimony could easily be interpreted as he had stopped sending money to the Contras before he was selling to Ross. (Ergo, the notion of sales to Ross being funneled to the Contras was bogus.) And Ross was mixed up in selling drugs before he ever met Blandon.The film also doesn't really develop the history of the drug (which really undermines Webb's contention). The Medellin cartel had already established contacts in LA and was importing the stuff well before Ross was in business. For example, in 1979 (before the Nicaraguan revolution happened), federal agents busted up a Colombian ring in Granada Hills that had been flying in 200-kilo cocaine loads via Lear jets and Cessnas. (Cartels like the Medellin and Cali organizations revolutionized the drug trade by switching to mass moving the merchandise (as opposed to the old "mule" methods).) Kingpins in south central LA like "Tootie" Reese had established links with the South American cartels well before then. 3 Federal investigations into this established that. (Most notably the Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation.) On the east coast, they had established a base of operations on Norman's Cay in 1978 that created a cocaine pipeline to the whole east coast (and beyond).And this isn't just taking the government's word for it either. Checking several newspaper archives, I found that cocaine was all over LA county (including south central) by the late 70's. One article (entitled 'Cocaine use up for white collar workers', by the NY Times News Service and carried in several newspapers (on 9/16/1979)) stated that (according to Raymond Wells, a LA county criminologist): “You can find cocaine anywhere in L.A. County, from the lower to the upper classes.” Other articles found echo the same thing across the country as cocaine was about to surpass coffee as Colombia's number one export. This resulted in a glut on the cocaine market that drove prices down and made it more available. The crack aspect of it came into play as word spread as how to make it. This didn't have anything to do with the people in Dark Alliance (despite its claim that Blandon was “the Johnny Appleseed of crack in California”). Webb himself said he found formulas for cooking up crack going back to the 70's, and Ross specifically denied anyone associated with the Dark Alliance story ever taught him how to make crack.As far as the manpower involved goes, in 'Dark Alliance' Webb lamented about the lack of public outrage that the CIA “had worked cheek by jowl with more than 50 suspected drug traffickers”. First off, they obviously were not on the payroll to run drugs (despite what some may think). They were on the payroll to keep the Contras in supply. And secondly, to put that number in perspective, according to 'The War on Drugs: An International Encyclopedia': "an estimated 300 Colombian trafficking groups and 20,000 Colombians were involved in the cocaine trade in the United States [by the late 80's]. At least 5,000 of the Colombians who worked for the cartels lived in the Miami area and another 6,000 in the Los Angeles area." In other words: the cartels had about as much manpower in the United States alone than were in the entire Contra movement. (The Medellin cartel employed 750,000 people in Medellin.) So needless to say, the cocaine trade wasn't hinging on 50 guys associated with the Contras.Furthermore, the Dark Alliance series by its own numbers undermines the notion of Ross & Co. starting or maintaining such a epidemic: Webb gives the number (in 'Dark Alliance') Blandon sold to Ross at around 5 tons. By DEA estimates, more cocaine went to Los Angeles in a *single* year (i.e. 1980; before Blandon was selling to Ross) than Ross sold over 8-10 years.It's also important to put into perspective who Ross's suppliers were: they were not Contras who went into dealing to support them.....they were dealers sympathetic to their cause who kept most of the money they made. That's an important distinction.How much Blandon and Meneses gave to the Contras is a frequent point of contention with the story. Although Webb claimed millions, most provable estimates are between 50 to 100 thousand dollars. But simple logic can solve the problem, or at least undermine the notion we are talking millions. Up until 1984, the United States put up about 70 million for the Contras. In 1985, the war ground to a halt because Congress cut off funding (in-part triggering the Iran-Contra affair). Congress re-started funding in 1986 and ergo the war started back shortly thereafter. Meanwhile, during this period, Blandon and Ross had (literally) piles of money laying around (we are talking in the hundreds of millions). So where was this coke money when the Contras needed it? Furthermore, why even bother with the Contra aspect of Iran-Contra (which got them maybe 2 million from the diversions of the arms sales to Iran) when all that coke money was supposedly out there?A big part of the film was the supposed CIA media campaign against Webb. (Via most of the major national newspapers. Before the movie came out, an internal document from the CIA appeared discussing how they supposedly influenced things through “productive relations with journalists”.) The depiction of this treatment was somewhat accurate: they did (at times) put words in his mouth. But to say the only sources for the media's scrutiny was CIA officials just isn't true. In particular, the LA Times was singled out in this regard. In the film, Webb calls a guy named “Rich Kline” to complain about the Times [CIA] sources for their attacks. (Since the LA Times had no one by that name on the story, I assume it was supposed to be Jesse Katz.) But in the oft-criticized LA Times story (in part because Katz had made grandiose statements about Ross before Webb's story broke), aside from law enforcement officials and former gang members, Ronald K. Siegel (a UCLA professor who was one of the first to do research on smoking cocaine) was one of the sources. Also quoted was Malcolm Klein and Cheryl Maxson, USC sociologists (Klein is considered an expert on gangs). And its obvious they did their research as the drug dealers they name are all easily verifiable. At Webb's own paper, Pete Carey (who co-wrote the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake story with Webb; a series of stories that won the staff of SJMN a Pulitzer Prize) called 30 cocaine experts and not one of them agreed with the notion "that Ross played a critical role in either crack cocaine's origins or its eventual spread throughout the country" (to quote a line directly from 'Kill The Messenger' (p.155) that didn't make it into the movie).The movie also depicts (some would say “fabricates” is a more accurate term) a number instances of personal harassment [and contact] of Webb by the government and its agencies. Before he even writes the story, some "agents"/"a few guys from D.C." meet with him and try to warn him off and also make a implied threat against his family. Ray Liota plays a CIA agent who sneaks into Webb's hotel room in the middle of the night to tell him he is right. And finally, Webb fires a warning shot at a guy hanging around his car at night. Following that, some unidentified people start going through Webb's files while he is talking to the police. To my knowledge, even Webb didn't claim any of these events happened. I think the closest thing to this was the fact Webb once shot a would-be car thief who came at him. But this was in Kentucky and years before he came across the Dark Alliance story.As the controversy develops in the film, a montage is shown of a variety of leaders in the African-American community reacting to the story. Among those shown is one Maxine Waters, a Congressional Representative of south central LA. A well known demagog on anything relating to race, she infamously described former LA mayor Richard Riordan as a “plantation owner” and sat in the basement of a church during the 1992 LA riots and blamed everyone *but* the rioters for what was going on up stairs. (The latter made for one unforgettable moment of the TV show Nightline.) While Webb distanced himself from some of the accusations of people like Waters (who was anxious to find a scapegoat for the situation in her district), he failed to distance himself from them personally, which is something not addressed by the movie. (Waters wound up writing the foreword of 'Dark Alliance'.) At times, this gave the appearance of him backing some of the more outlandish charges associated with the story.But if there was any doubt where Webb stood on the government's involvement.....it was pretty much settled once 'Dark Alliance' was published in 1998 (the timeline of the movie ends before this part of Webb's life). Not only that, it severely damaged whatever credibility Webb had left by trying to pass off some stories as genuine that are ludicrous on their face. One notable one had to be the Allen Raul Rudd story. According to Rudd (a captured Colombian trafficker), then VP George Bush flew down to Colombia to strike a deal with the Medellin cartel: they could fly as much cocaine into the USA as they wanted as long as they sold guns to the Contras. The deal was sealed with cartel leader Jorge Ochoa and Bush posing for a photo together with suitcases filled with cash. Even some of the people sympathetic to Webb (like David Corn) admitted they had a hard time keeping a straight face reading that one. To believe it, you would have to accept that Bush/Reagan carried out this agreement by shutting down the aforementioned Norman's Cay (which was put out of business due to pressure from the US government in 1982) not to mention all the other pressure the US government was putting on them as time progressed. (Which resulted in some members of the cartel putting a bounty on members of the DEA). You'd also have to believe that no one in the Medellin cartel would bother to produce this photo as President Bush was pressuring Colombia into a war against them that would end in many of their leaders being either killed or thrown in the slammer.Such stories demonstrate one of the inherent weaknesses of Webb's work: Too much was riding on the word of drug dealers facing some serious charges. Drug informants, indeed just about all criminal informants, are notoriously unreliable. According to Northwestern University Law School's Center on Wrongful Convictions (in 2004), 45.9 percent of documented wrongful capital convictions have been tied to false informant testimony (the leading cause). And drug dealers have dreamed up whoppers of this magnitude before. Probably most famously (or some would same infamously): the case of Christian David. David claimed that he knew of a Corsican hit team that were the actual assassins of President Kennedy. A producer believed him and it became the basis for the television series 'The Men Who Killed Kennedy'. (It's also important to note that David's story got some degree of corroboration from Michel Nicoli. Nicoli was a former heroin trafficker who had testified for the US government in drug trials before, and was considered by the government to be very reliable.) Later it turned out that all three assassins were overseas the day David claimed they were in Dallas. (Whoops.)At the end of the film a number of statements appear that are somewhat misleading. For one, it mentions the the Director of the CIA's appearance in a “town hall” type meeting with the citizens of south central Los Angeles, and that the director left the CIA a month later. That leaves the impression Deutch left the CIA because of the Dark Alliance series. Deutch was actually forced out because the Clinton administration was upset with his testimony to Congress on Iraq. A statement is also made that the CIA released a report that acknowledged the fact they “...associated with members of the Contra movement who engaged in drug trafficking.” True. But just not the ones Webb wrote about. The mentioned report specifically denies that the agency ever had any contact with Ross, Blandon, or Meneses. Furthermore, that report (and the unmentioned DOJ report), far from being a vindication for the Dark Alliance series, blew a great many holes in the story. And finally, Webb's two shot suicide is mentioned. The movie states it was “ruled” a suicide. But there is little doubt. Webb had made arrangements for his cremation (as well as other things), and even his own family does not doubt it was a suicide based on his actions before hand. (Nick Schou covers this in 'Kill The Messenger'. In a way, it was kind of good this aspect of Webb's life was omitted from the film because it made for some depressing reading.)So at the end of the day, where does this leave us? On the one hand, I liked Webb's moxie in being willing to go after something like this and challenge the establishment. It's also an important reminder of the type of people we get mixed up with in clandestine operations. (Which was a continuing theme in the Cold War.) It also forced the CIA to come clean about the fact it was looking the other way with regards to some of these people's backgrounds.On the other hand, the overreaching (and sometimes ridiculous) claims of the series and book have put some myths into the nation's blood stream that abides to this very day. In fairness to Webb, if the series had better editorial oversight, it probably could have been saved. But apparently there was some struggle between editors (unrelated to the series) that let this slip through the cracks. However, I think Webb should have known better than to print some of the things that went into 'Dark Alliance'. (Not to mention getting involved with some people that had ties to the Christic Institute's lawsuit. For more on that, see Glenn Garvin's review of 'Dark Alliance' available on Reason.com's web site.) Also, the movie (while not a documentary) was disappointing in its handling of the facts.So a mixed review for me....but I still recommend it.

Very good acting , thriller true story with out come i didnt see coming very sad ending makes you question what this government is doing, who do they think they are.ruined a mans life and his families life

Full of excitement and I love Jeremy Renner

Very good story. Enjoyed every minute of it. I recommend the viewing.

Good film with lots of action and it’s got Jeremy renner in

I followed the Iran/Contra story very carefully when it was in the news but never knew this part of the story. I still would like to understand how the coroner ruled it a suicide when he was shot TWICE. My police friends say that is impossible and I believe them. Of course the Government never investigated it either. The title sure describes what happened. CIA strikes again.

Es geht auch ohne Action. Jeremy Renner glänzt mal wieder durch schauspielerisches Talent. Als Journalist kommt er hier dem CIA auf die Schliche... und das hat Folgen.Irgendwie erinnert "Kill the Messenger" an Klassiker wie "die Unbestechlichen" (R.Redford, D. Hoffman) der auch komplett ohne sichtbare Gewaltszenen auskommt und durch journalistischen Spürsinn Spannung erzeugt. Man würde sich mehr intelligente Unterhaltung dieser Art wünschen, die zeigt... dass eine packende realitätsbezogene Story immer noch deutlich spannender ist als die grössten Explosionen. Nach einer wahren Begebenheit zu Bill Clinton Zeiten. Pflichtfilm!

ジャーナリストの真髄を見せてもらいました。　ジェレミー・レナーが好演してます。他のどんな役より、この作品のジェレミー・レナーが良いです。（ウインド・リバーは未見）追記：ウインドリバーの彼も良いです（笑）　ちなみに「バリー・シール」をあわせてみると　誰がUSAを麻薬漬けにしたかが見えてきます。大抵のオーディエンスには退屈かもしれません。が、地味ながら屈指の1本です。日本版リリースはないかあ。文化的にも貧困だなあ。