argo kill yourself

In the mid-1990s, the late Gary Webb, an investigative reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, published an ultra-provocative article drawing a complicit line from the United States government under Ronald Reagan to drug cartels in Nicaragua. Conversation and praise rapidly turned to stigmatization and threats as the government and other newspapers discredited and undermined his reporting, resulting in tragedy and, later, melancholy and overdue vindication. His story is dramatized in Kill the Messenger, a solidly old-fashioned and riveting journalistic suspense film. With its love of shorthand notes, imploring phone calls, and pavement-pounding media diligence, it could be described as in the tradition of the great All the President's Men, yet it does not build from the opaque to the triumphant the way the Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein picture does. In fact, it goes in the other direction, chronicling the cruel and undeserved dismantling of a gifted reporter's hard-won deductive achievement. It is a crusading-newspaperman film, to be sure, but a deeply sad and often infuriating one.

Portraying Webb, a game Jeremy Renner delivers the finest performance of his career to date. The film rests on his shoulders—the anxious hand-held camera is nearly always extremely close to him—and as bombast and truth-and-justice ferocity give way to paranoia and spiritual deflation, his portrayal of a man in decline rings true to an almost painful degree. He demolishes a third-act speech in which an exhausted, yet still quietly defiant Webb reflects on his career and ideals before an informal jury of his peers, cementing the power of an Oscar-worthy turn. Aiding him is an extensive ensemble cast overflowing with colorful character actors and welcome faces; the best may be Michael Sheen as a well-intentioned, but cynical and hardened Washington, D.C. veteran who tries and fails to warn Webb of the sensational character-assassination tactics employed to distract people from far more urgent questions.

A-

This was fantastic and underrated. Jeremy Renner is great, as is the stellar supporting cast. A fascinating story.

9/10 (A-)