When some stories are just too true to tell

IN the movies, the truth doesn't have to get in the way of a good story, and that's why the cardinal rule of journalism - just the unvarnished facts, with reliable verification - doesn't apply to Kill the Messenger: a "based-on-a-true-story" account of an investigative reporter's dogged pursuit of the scoop of a lifetime. A few liberties are taken for dramatic effect but there's also a good dose of reality, and until it staggers near the end, this is a solid and suspenseful political thriller.

Within seconds of the opening scene - an early-1970s screen grab of US President Richard Nixon declaring a nationwide war on drugs - it's clear where director Michael Cuesta's sympathies lie. Nixon was just a bungled break-in away from impeachment but the men who succeeded him - Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan - continued to say "no" to drugs, even as a crack cocaine epidemic raged out of control in the country's inner cities.

In 1996, Gary Webb (Jeremy Renner), a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News with a nose for sniffing out government misdeeds, is handed a classified document by a source who is far from reliable.