THE source for Michael Cuesta’s film is Gary Webb’s 1996 articles in the “San Jose Mercury” telling how the CIA set in motion the 1980s crack cocaine epidemic by importing planeloads of cocaine into the US to finance the Nicaraguan Contras.

Why did the articles not generate media frenzy? Because concurrently with Webb’s articles, Monica Lewinsky’s palating of POTUS’ prong was the hot-news ticket.

Cuesta and writer Peter Landesman follow Webb’s trail through the dirty, drug-trafficking world, projecting him as a decent man good at his job, devoted to revealing the truth. The result offers as much credibility as does any film claiming to be based on real events.

The mingling of family with work rather diminishes the film’s delivery of Webb’s commitment and the angry reaction of the Government agencies, which the articles accused of misbehaviour on a grand scale.

The film is unclear about whether POTUS was ever made aware of what the CIA was doing in pursuit of an ideology-based foreign policy without any sort of concern for the consequences for a major domestic policy.

TV news footage shows the anger of the black community about the damage crack cocaine was wreaking on families. The film’s collages of images and soundtrack work less effectively than the filmmakers seem to have intended in conveying the social wreckage that the drug was causing.

The film is a tour de force for Jeremy Renner as Webb. Rosemarie DeWitt plays his wife. Oliver Platt is the editor of the Mercury and Barry Pepper is the attorney engaged by the CIA to try to stop publication of the articles.

In 2005, a coroner ruled that Webb’s death from two gunshots to the head was suicide. Think about that.

At Capitol 6 and Palace Electric