Politics and Journalism. Two areas that will never able to work well. Politicians swear that everything they do is for the sake of people. Journalists claim that they have an obligation to inform us about all the relevant aspects of the society in which we live in.

Kill the Messenger is an intense film about an important piece of history of the United States that ended up falling by the wayside. Based on the true story of journalist Gary Webb (Jeremy Renner) who made a shocking discovery in the mid 90's. Webb discovered that the CIA was involved in the importation of large quantities of drugs into the United States, which were sold in huge quantities into American ghettos, raising money for "Contras", rebel groups in Nicaragua and received financial and military support from the USA, during the administration of Ronald Reagan. Pressed not to continue with the investigation of this case, Webb decides to continue searching for all the facts and becomes a target to beat.

Jeremy Renner has a very solid performance, carrying the central character throughout the film very well, transmiting every emotion truthfully. Some good names are part of the supporting cast, names like Rosemarie DeWitt, Mary Elizabeth Winstead or Oliver Platt among others, but unfortunately they don't have the opportunity to shine, definitely with good performances, but without much relevance.

It is quite obvious that the idea of the film would honor the presistente work of this journalist and his tragic end, the result of having delivered himself into a case that everyone involved was trying to cover up. The journalistic and criminal part of this story is quite well built and manages to be totally interesting making the audience searching to find out more and more like Webb with the course of the story, but when it is added the side of the family drama that the journalist begins to live (also a consequence of the work which he was involved) is that when things do not result in the best way. We are definitely interested in knowing what the next step of the research is and the suspense is suddenly broken with too much family drama involving personal things of Webb's marriage, as betrayals of the past, things that are totally unnecessary for what the film intends to pass.

Kill the Messenger turns out to be successful when it leaves in the air that feeling of "conspiracy theory" a side that Americans hate to show, but ultimately fail when the tension is broken with unnecessary elements.