Yesterday I did one of my favorite things. I saw two movies in one day. Which is only bested by seeing three movies in one day. I first saw Kill the Messenger followed by Fury. Despite both films appealing to the same sort of audience they were actually quite different and I ended up pretty damn pleased with both of them.
First let’s talk about Kill the Messenger. The film took place in 1995. It was very, very strange for the movie to feel like a period piece because I actually remember all the news events from 1995. This makes me feel old because it doesn’t feel like that long ago but it’s almost 20 years. So despite my personal misgivings, yes, you can have a period piece from 20 years ago. And despite only covering events from 20 years ago it felt very much like a 70’s political thriller, which is why it probably felt older. Well that and Jeremy Renner’s horrible hair, he’s starting to get a track record of making films with bad haircuts (see American Hustle). The movie is about the conflict in Nicaragua during the 80’s and how our government backed the Contra rebels against the communists seeking a foothold in that Central American nation. Most people know about this from the Iran-Contra scandal, but this film focuses on an entirely different scandal covering the same piece of history. Renner plays Gary Webb, a journalist from central California who breaks the story that the CIA promoted the sale of crack cocaine in American cities and used the profits from that to purchases weapons for the Contra rebels because Congress would not support the effort. Renner is one of those rare actors that can easily transition from smaller passion projects and prestige films to gigantic summer tentpole series. He’s excellent in The Hurt Locker, The Town, American Hustle, and The Immigrant and exudes charisma in larger films like Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, The Avengers, and The Bourne Legacy. His next two films will be Avengers: Age of Ultron and Mission: Impossible 5, both in 2015. So we can hope 2016 to be a year of smaller projects for Renner.
The first half of the film is an exciting political thriller where Renner travels to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Managua, and Washington D.C. to uncover the scheme. It involves your normal globetrotting intrigue with backroom deals and unscrupulous characters. One of the standouts from this portion of the film is an intense courtroom scene involving a paid government informant who ultimately explains the connection between the CIA and drugs. The highlight of the first half of the film is all the small roles that terrific characters actors got to play in. These include, Barry Pepper as a federal prosecutor, Michael K. Williams as Freeway Rick Ross (not the rapper, but the guy who the rapper stole his stage name from), Tim Blake Nelson as his attorney, Paz Vega as a girlfriend of a powerful South American drug kingpin, Andy Garcia as an imprisoned Central American drug kingpin (lots of kingpins here), and Michael Sheen as a government official in the Clinton administration. These roles last maybe 5 or 10 minutes each throughout the entire film, and you couldn’t help but want to see more of them, but they did very admirably with the time given them.
The second half of the film is less exciting in the traditional sense but still offers quite a lot of intrigue. After Renner’s character publishes the article exposing all this the secretive effort to discredit him begins almost immediately. It almost turns into a family drama at this point. This is where his wife, played by Rosemarie DeWitt really shines. Aside from Renner her’s is the most substantive performance in the film. Going any further would spoil the little nuances that make this film. Suffice to say the film doesn’t really end with a bang, but a simmering taste of disgust that not only can our government do such things but really expect to get away with it. The film really paints Gary Webb as a hero, which is to be expected since his book is the source material, and while the film is based on a true story you can tell some generous liberties were taken.
A final name to mention is that of the director, Michael Cuesta. Most of his best known work is from TV. He’s directed terrific episodes of Six Feet Under (my all-time favorite TV series by the way), Dexter, and Homeland. This work is most similar to Homeland and it makes you wonder if this film would’ve worked better as a TV series given all the potential spots for great cliffhangers. But regardless Cuesta is a capable eye behind the camera and I hope he gets more work on larger pictures, he seems to have this genre well under control.
Coming up shortly will be my thoughts on Fury. Stay tuned.
midwestmovieman 