Because I sure can’t. Any time the CIA is portrayed in movies, if they aren’t the outright good guys, they have all these qualifications about them being the bad guys. Like, it’s either some faction within the CIA or one person that turns out to be “bad”; then the rest of the agency fights against them. Stuff like that. Either way, every single movie that involves the CIA ultimately validates the “goodness” of the agency, and never dares bring up the things we know for certain they did, like support right wing death squads or back the coup against Arbenz (and the list goes on).
Kill The Messenger (2014) was profitable and well received critically, being nominated for and winning several awards despite attempts by the studio to limit is advertising and release.
it was leaked online and among the most pirated movies for several weeks.
and the punchline is, it’s a biographical crime thriller about Gary Webb’s discovery of CIA drug trafficking and subsequent marginalization/execution… a true story!
despite attempts by the studio to limit is advertising and release.
Lol studio execs are all like “pwwease Mr. CIA we really don’t support our own movie, honest! Pwwease don’t cut us off from the propaganda pipeline!”
Edit: went to rotten tomatoes to read about this movie and of course under critic consensus they say “Kill the Messenger’s potent fury over the tale of its real-life subject overrides its factual inaccuracies and occasional narrative stumbles”. Oh really, would love to know what those “factual inaccuracies” are…
I recommend it to everyone just looking for a cool crime thriller movie. I think it’s on Netflix currently.
it’s surreal to watch, good production value, good star power (Jeremy Renner rocks). I remember thinking “how the fuck did this get greenlit?”
some government relationship liaison was 100% asleep at the studio until it was too late.
Like a lot of things, it’s actually a trope
The real problem is the FBI (or any other cop/fed) being treated as good in response
Narcos kinda shows how the CIA funded deug trafficking and right wing paramilitaries, but then on the other hand it shows the DEA as the good guys
Yeah, fuck Narcos. The producer/creator is a brazilian right-winger who got famous for creepy (far)right-wing action movies, where police torturing suspects is actually cool and good and shit like that. The whole point of Narcos is to whitewash and justify America’s “war on drugs”.
The CIA, Naval Intelligence, and, to a lesser extent, the DEA are all portrayed as unambiguously the bad guys utterly evil and deeply corrupt.
spoiler
The plot is about our heroes accidentally getting sucked into a feud between the CIA, Naval Intelligence and the Cartels after they rob a bank holding black money the CIA extorted from the cartels on the orders of the DEA (that doesn’t know what’s up and is just ruining people’s lives to make a bust) and Naval Intelligence (who is trying to steal the CIAs money for their own blackops/corruption).
Shockingly based for an $80 million budget Summer Blockbuster starring Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg.
