Kill the Messenger: Gripping drama

Kill the Messenger
Starring: Jeremy Renner, Ray Liotta, Barry Pepper, Michael Sheen, Andy Garcia, Oliver Platt
Rated: 6.5/10
The CIA’s covert operations, unholy liaisons and destructive missions are all too familiar to need an explanation. The spooks are known to be involved in shadowy multi-nation ventures in the name of American interest. One such is the peg to this highly gripping movie about a small newspaper investigative reporter who breaks the biggest story of his career, only to be hounded by the system, discredited, disowned by his editors, abandoned by his family and finally found dead some years after going into virtual anonymity.
Played to perfection by Jeremy Renner, this true life story has all the element of intrigue to keep you on the hook even though it stretches in parts. While the director slips in keeping the pace up and the editors can be said to have been caught napping in certain time zones of the film, it is the story that catches you unawares.
The film’s raison d etre is that it dwells on a case in which an honest reporter is hounded out by a monstrous but very cohesive system which is wrong but strong enough to keep the common man on a leash. It’s something that was there when CIA was deluging California with cocaine to further its interests in Nicaragua and it is there today when communism in that area is history.

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 19 October, 2014

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