TROPIC SPROCKETS

 

Kill the Messenger
BY IAN BROCKWAY

Jeremy Renner gives a raw and visceral performance as Gary Webb, a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, in “Kill the Messenger” by director Michael Cuesta (L.I.E.). Leave it to Renner, the combustible actor of “The Hurt Locker,” to bring a real verve to this man who was clearly hunted and vilified because of his searing journalism and his book Dark Alliance.

It is 1996 and Bill Clinton is in the White House. Gary Webb is a small time reporter. No one pays much attention to him. Webb writes a story about drug dealers being stripped of their rights and houses even after they are acquitted. His news office takes notice and he scores a hit. One day he gets a surprise call from a gangster’s moll, the seductive Coral Baca (Paz Vega) who has a body like an infinity sign.

Baca tells Webb that she has proof that her man possesses grand jury testimony about dealers getting crack into the country and selling it to the CIA to provide cash for a dirty war, specifically to fight the Contras in Nicaragua. Webb confronts DA Russell Dodson (excellently played by Barry Pepper, one of the best unsung actors today) and he is as smarmy as they come. Webb travels to Central America and interviews Norwin Meneses (Andy Garcia) who gives him some cryptic news. He then goes to a Swiss banker Hansjorg Baier, (Brett Rice)  who becomes indispensable. He is corpulent, dapper and smooth with more Highsmithic ability than Chester McFarland from “The Two Faces of January”. With enough information, Webb writes with silver speed on wings of light. In one notable scene, he pummels the air with his big brassy arms and lets out a primal scream. In his moments of restless energy he seems like John Belushi or maybe Hunter Thompson (after all both were truth-tellers, albeit with different mediums). Webb’s story breaks as is and he is treated as a celeb or an enfant terrible almost on the level with a Truman Capote. Everyone wants him from 60 Minutes on down. Then the noose tightens. This is tightly crafted with more spooks than any sociopathic scare fest. The later scenes containing some soundless cement jawed agents are both as otherworldly and as creepily tangible as anything depicted in “The Matrix.”

Renner is flawless as a gutsy but down to earth journalist who becomes literally asphyxiated by his reporting with no real outlet for his work. Through it all he tries to hold on in loving his caring wife (Rosemarie DeWitt) who becomes increasingly put off by his covert journeys.

Oliver Platt appears as a sycophantic boss who is all charm when Webb is on top and then full  of aversion and petty belittlement for him when the media backs away. Granted “The Hurt Locker” was Jeremy Renner’s breakthrough, but you will remember this actor just as much for this role. Through Renner’s  incarnation, we feel the weight on Webb’s shoulders as a textural experience.

The most disturbing thing in the film is that it shows an American agency, namely the CIA, acting with impunity and squashing this man in its path as the rest of the country is suddenly overwhelmed in the voluptual blindness of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. There was more virulent national poison afoot and “Kill the Messenger” deserves its rightful place among other films like “All the President’s Men” and “State of Play” for its part in exposing a genuine toxicity with tension and grace.

Before I Go To Sleep

Rowan Joffé (Brighton Rock) offers an entertaining if cliche-bound thriller with echoes of “Momento” in “Before I Go To Sleep.” The film, which stars Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth, also has traces of  “Suspicion” as well, given Kidman’s very paranoia. Here Christine (Nicole Kidman) wakes up with the handsome sleeping Ben (Colin Firth).

Normally, for most this would not be a problem. But Christine doesn’t know who Ben is. He explains somewhat laconically that she has had an head injury years ago and they have been married for about 14 years. Christine is flabbergasted. Ben leaves a daily itinerary on a board with important details written out step by step.

Christine moves through the modern house as if stuck in molasses and Ben is almost a cigar store Indian given his stony immobility.  Christine gets calls from her doctor (Mark Strong) who explains that she has a video journal in a camera located in a drawer. Christine locates the object and watches clips of herself (a la “Twelve Monkeys”) relate that she does have amnesia and more disturbingly, that she will forget the day’s events as soon as she falls into sleep each night with no recall the next morning.

Still even more frightening, the video version of  Christine feels someone is out to kill her. Consequently, a domestic noose of sorts seems to tighten around her, within the house and the people she spies. As we can guess, trust becomes hazardous. Directors like Hitchcock (Suspicion) Roman Polanski (Repulsion) and  George Cukor (Gaslight) have worked masterfully with the premise of the harried or hysterical wife and Rowan Joffé pays adequate homage.

The film also does well, skillfully blending in past and present events and subversively altering Firth’s handsome and iconic actor’s image. Here, Firth gives us an odd and passive sorrow combined with a reckless sardonic quality. Best of all, the film highlights Firth as a man with the capacity to be both eerie and insipid. However, after the first jolt, the melodrama is so heightened, bold and loud that there is little juice left for subsequent surprises. The film would have fared better with softer and creepier scares.

Some of the shocks are foreshadowed by jarring noises or blunt equipment just out of reach in the manner of any network TV shocker. The oft-filmed story of the woman with nowhere to run has such a rich cinema history that the twists and turns in “Before I Go to Sleep” seem a bit slumberous.

The one lasting element remains the emotional power of Kidman and Firth who perform all of the loud reversals  onscreen as if for the first time, almost conceptually as a kind of film within a film. By itself though, “Before I Go To Sleep” suffers a bit from a déjà vu that it shares with its other more original, cinematic cousins.

Write Ian at [email protected]

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