Film Review: Kill the Messenger
by Mr. First Nighter
The most surprising thing about Kill the Messenger, the new film directed by Michael Cuesta and starring Jeremy Renner, is not the film's topic. After all, a number of independent film producers and even some mainstream Hollywood players occasionally delve into forbidden subject areas if they have a bit of courage plus the ability to raise a certain amount of cash. Examples run from 2005's blockbuster V for Vendetta to 2010's The Tillman Story, a film scheduled for exhibition at Mr. First Nighter’s favorite indie theater but which was mysteriously pulled at the last minute. But the former was fiction and thus easily dismissed as futuristic fantasy having absolutely nothing to do with contemporary political issues, and the latter was a documentary by nature restricted in its audience to a limited number of political skeptics, football fans, and docuphiles.
Kill the Messenger, on the other hand, is a straight dramatic film based on the true story of Gary Webb, the reporter who garnered attention in the 1990's for uncovering the CIA’s role in enlisting drug smugglers as assets in various covert operations resulting in the importation of drugs ultimately consumed by America’s youth. The film stars two-time Academy Award nominee Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker, The Town), who also produced and was presumably the catalyst for the creation of the film. The surprising thing about the film is not that it was made, but that it somehow found its way into megaplexes around the country thanks to its distributor, Focus Features. This means that not only are thousands of people going to watch it in the theater, but many thousand more will be watching on cable and the internet. Not something that the CIA’s media assets are going to take lying down.
It is apparent to Mr. First Nighter that various mainstream newspapers throughout the nation have certain designated film reviewers who are assigned to review particular "controversial" films and who can be counted on to either pan them or mock the political perspective and pretend that the film is either “paranoid,” factually inaccurate, or both. (Who do you have in mind?) It is certain that they will be assigned to review Kill the Messenger, and equally certain that “news” articles and opinion pieces will be published attempting to counter or at least mute the impact of the film’s message. The Washington Post, one of the CIA’s greatest media assets and one of the chief villains in “Kill The Messenger,” for example recently published a hit piece asserting that Webb didn’t have “sufficient evidence” of the CIA’s running with the drug runner’s, despite Webb’s having interviewed those principally involved. The Post, apparently, wanted documentary agency admissions or perhaps secret video footage before it would report on the story. This is the same newspaper that in 2003 reported the existence of “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq based on nothing more than a White House press release and without any shred of evidence or even the slightest attempt to verify. Mainstream “journalism” indeed. The good news? Hardly anyone pays any attention to the dinosaur press anymore, and Gary Webb was among those who contributed to its demise.
And this is the real story contained in Kill The Messenger. When Webb first broke the story while working at the San Jose Mercury News, despite the burgeoning impact of the internet the large-city daily newspapers along with network television still ran the journalistic show. The film is about their orchestrated destruction of Webb after his reporting on the small paper’s website started to get a little too much attention. The campaign against him was spearheaded by the Washington Post, and after the major newspapers unleashed their fury it was only a matter of time before the neocons and rival journalists piled on. Eventually, his own paper turned its back on him, and Webb was forced into alternative media outlets. After a bout with depression, he was on his way to re-establishing himself as an independent journalist when he was found dead with two gunshot wounds. Suicide, according to the official verdict.
Nowadays, of course, nobody bats an eye at the CIA’s checkered past. What with government misconduct ranging from Fast and Furious to the not-so-covert continual funding of violent radical Muslims, the story of the CIA’s involvement with drug runners seems at this point in history almost quaint. But the brutality of the media onslaught against Webb, culminating in his death, continues to disturb. The film’s treatment of this aspect is first-rate, despite the absence of any thematic resolution which might have provided some sort of cinematic climax. Renner, who recently was seen in the role of Mayor Carmine Polito in the Abscam-inspired film American Hustle, plays the role perfectly and without any attempt to make his character more mythic than human. The supporting players, including Rosemarie DeWitt as Webb’s spouse, Oliver Platt as Webb’s sympathetic but ultimately cowardly managing editor, and Ray Liotta in a small but important bit as an informant who breaks into Webb’s hotel room, are all well-cast and engaging. The film is a must-see, and one only hopes that the film does well enough to encourage not only its distributor but its lead artistic force, Mr. Renner, to take further thematic risks. This one, artistically at least, has succeeded.
-October 21, 2014
More Pointless Death
Condolences to the families of those lost
in the U.S. Navy helicopter crash in the Red Sea. Yet another reason
that the U.S. should not be maintaining World Police stations throughout
the globe. The American government is broke; bad will towards the U.S.
is spreading at an accelerating rate; and the misery continues to
grow. Shouldn't these latest victims have been in America, contributing
to the economy and helping support their families? How soon are
Kerry's kids, and McCain's grandkids, going to be sacrificing in the
manner they wish for the rest of us? Oh, yeah, right about never.
That's just for the suckers.
One (More) Big Lie
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, renowned for
exposing the My Lai massacre and whose mainstream credentials are
impeccable, said in an interview with the Guardian this week that "not
one word" of the U.S. government's story regarding the "assassination"
of Osama bin Laden is true and that it's all "one big lie." Gee, ya
think? Coming from someone else this might not be noteworthy, as who
among us doesn't realize all too well that almost everything that the
government tells us is nothing but either high fantasy or low
deception? Sy Hersh, though, reaches an audience that is typically
blindly faithful to leftist politicians, and his statement that his
former employer The New York Times is simply "carrying water" for the
current Murderer-In-Chief is refreshingly blunt. Hersh, who also
reported extensively about the Abu Ghraib scandals, called today's
mainstream media "obsequious" and "pathetic." Not exactly a revelation,
but yet another sign that the media dinosaurs that used to be able to
manipulate the political dialog with ease can no longer do so, having
long ago lost the ability to create even a pretense of journalistic
credibility. Hersh's upcoming book on the bin Laden fable should be
interesting but, like this interview, will probably be buried by the
dying media outlets that once lionized him.
-September 27, 2013
A Grotesque Display
Ordinarily, the recent sad story of the poor disturbed woman who was brutally murdered in front of her daughter would not merit any comment. There is a story virtually every week that some government employee somewhere has heaped abuse of one form or another on one of his or her employers, i.e., a taxpaying member of the public. In this case, the circulation of the shocking video showing the woman being shot in the head after her vehicle had been trapped by “law enforcement” is simply another grim reminder of the state’s brutality.
No, the real story is that the House of Representatives instead of calling for an investigation of the rampant increase in the use of excessive force in all areas of law enforcement (or, more tastefully, refraining from any comment at all) actually went out of their way to celebrate the murder. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland expressed gratitude to the police for the shooting. And, after thunderous applause from his fellow tax-and-spenders, Rep. Eric Cantor stated that lawmakers “really appreciate” the DC cops for their actions.
The criminal instincts of our lawmakers have long been obvious, but this most recent exhibition in the House is further indication that our employees have no sense of right or wrong. Additionally, where is the outrage from the press, members of the government, activists, and others? This is, sadly, further indication of a nation that has utterly lost its moral compass.
--October 5, 2013
LOL!
Who says the government has no sense of humor? Well, they do. Apparently deciding their public relations haven’t been horrible enough, the NSA recently sent a "cease and desist" letter to Dan McCall, arguing that he’s violated their intellectual property rights. See, the NSA thinks that Dan’s satirical T-shirts which say things like “NSA - the only branch of the government that listens” and “NSA: Spying on you since 1952" will be confused as ACTUAL PRODUCTS approved by the NSA. Does the NSA really think these slogans are compliments?
Thankfully, Mr. McCall has filed suit in federal court asking the court to declare what is painfully obvious to everyone but the Party aparatchiks at the NSA: that the use of “NSA” or its
ludicrous logo by Mr. McCall is satirical and is protected by the “fair use” doctrine. The one thing the Party hates more than anything else, though, is being laughed at, so expect a major brouhaha.
--October 31, 2013
Happy Armistice Day
At the 11th hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year 1918, the Great War formally ended. The war produced a devastating effect, not only on the battleground of Europe, but also on the United States which provided its by then enormous economic might to tip the war in favor of Great Britain, France and their allies.
By the time America entered the war, it had become the world’s economic wonder, in large measure due to its having been “conceived in liberty” and established in large part according to
the principles of philosophers such as John Locke, Adam Smith, and Jean Rousseau. Because of this, the United States had been free of the unending conflicts to which the people of Europe were unceasingly subjected. The nation, having a very limited government which allowed the development of a mature, free economy, had by then become the apex of economic prosperity. In a relatively short period of time, we had surpassed every other industrial nation, including Britain.
In 1918, America still valued its freedom, and most Americans understood that war inevitably leads to the erosion of freedom, retards economic progress, and is ultimately destructive of not only the individual but of all society. Woodrow Wilson, who was already planning to enter the war on Britain’s side, ran for re-election on the campaign slogan that “he kept us out of the war.” While the deceptive Wilson’s actions paving the way for America’s entry into the war are well documented, it is also useful to remember that what permitted the United States government to begin its long march toward collectivism and foreign interventionism in the first place was his pushing through Congress in his first term both the inflationary Federal Reserve system and the Federal Income Tax. Wilson, who like Theodore Roosevelt had adopted the philosophy of authoritarian collectivism (at that time called “progressivism”) was a major architect of collectivist policy that eventually precipitated the slow decline in freedom and economic growth. The process was gradual, of course, and when World War II inevitably broke out 20 years later, America was still the world’s premier economic power. But the die was cast, and it eventually led to the state we are now in: a nation subjected to an abusive government which decides how much freedom you have, how much of your money you can keep, and what political choices you may pick from.
But on that great day in November, our nation valued peace, and well understood the age-old contest of government power versus individual freedom. The people of America the day peace broke out expressed their gratitude for the end of a war which, they hoped, was simply an aberration interrupting America’s received principle of staying out of foreign wars waged principally by and for the benefit of special interests.
War is the health of the state, as has often been noted, and therefore it must also be noted that peace is the health of the individual and thus the basis of a free and prosperous society. So remember this when today the nation’s propaganda organs try to pervert this holiday into a celebration of the Perpetual War and the authoritarian state. Today instead should be a
remembrance of the sigh of relief that accompanied, as it always should, the end of government and special interest-instigated death and destruction.
Will America ever get to experience that again?
- November 11, 2013
Film Review: Captain America: The Winter Soldier
by Mr. First Nighter
As everyone knows, Hollywood has been churning out collectivist propaganda for at least the last eighty years. In recent decades this has manifested in not only the unrelenting disparaging of “capitalism” (or, rather, the left-wing’s cartoon version of capitalism) but, increasingly, attacks on those institutions which are traditionally seen as standing in the way of the authoritarian state’s ascension to omnipotence, such as religion and the nuclear family.
It cannot go unnoticed, however, that among the “new” Hollywood players are a small but apparently growing number of filmmakers who somehow managed to establish themselves without being thoroughly vetted by the film moguls who control the distribution and, in large measure, the financing of the film industry. Illustration number one would be the current release of the second entry in what appears to be a burgeoning franchise, Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
The film, first of all, features a superhero who wrestles with moral issues while acting in service to the state that employs him. In the beginning of the film, Captain America, a/k/a Steve Rogers (played in a superbly low-key manner by Chris Evans) has a conversation with his superior at S.H.I.E.L.D Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division), Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). Fury shows Rogers S.H.I.E.L.D.’s new “defensive” weapon system, Project Insight, soon scheduled to be launched and which will prevent “terrorism” by preemptively striking against targets who the system determines are threats to security. Fury adopts the viewpoint of the allegedly “pragmatic” cynic, saying to Rogers that Project Insight is necessary because “this is the world as it is, not as we’d like it to be.” Rogers responds by noting that while during World War II the Allies may have bent the rules and done some things that may not have been right, it was for the larger purpose of advancing the cause of freedom. But he finds Project Insight objectionable. “This isn’t freedom,” he tells Fury, “this is fear.”
More significantly, the clear villains of the film are the authoritarians in charge who are behind the implementation of Project Insight. Among them are the outright evil, such as primary instigator Alexander Pierce (well cast with Robert Redford) who heads the secret HYDRA organization that has penetrated and hijacked S.H.I.E.L.D., and who utters a statement that echos a long line of ne’er-do-wells from Joseph Goebbels and Mao Tse-Tung to George Bush and Barack Obama – “Captain, in Order to build a better world, it sometimes means tearing the old one down.” Also among them is the apparent initial visionary and philosophical godfather of the HYDRA conspiracy, Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, a “deceased” Nazi whose utopian dream is a world governed by a ruling intellectual elite that he directs. To him, implementers like Pierce and the governing Council he controls are merely expendable pawns whose knowledge of the ultimate goal is necessarily limited. “HYDRA, S.H.I.E.L.D., two sides of a coin that's no longer currency,” says the amused von Strucker. Also on the Dark Side is a slimy corrupt Senator, again well cast with Gary Shandling, who whispers to a S.H.I.E.L.D. functionary, “Hail Hydra,” on his way to engaging in some illicit sexual activity.
It is unnecessary to give away too much of the plot. Suffice it to say the film is full of action, and zips right along although it is over two hours. The film does break the tension with some occasional humor. At one point, referencing Captain America’s “former” life that took place some seventy years ago, the following exchange takes place -- Romanoff: “You do anything fun Saturday night?” Rogers: “Well, all the guys in my barbershop quartet are dead. So no, not really.” There is also a nice and not totally unrelated subplot involving Rogers’ effort to re-engage the lost humanity of his one-time friend and now adversary, Bucky Barnes.
It is not worthwhile simply to have a film with a “good” message. It also has to be good film. With its terrific acting, skilled editing, and engaging dialog, Captain America: The Winter Soldier delivers. Millions will see it, and most will undoubtedly not miss the contemporary allegory. A fine job, and hopefully the next one in the series will not backpedal on its ultimate message.
