Veronica Guerin Review
by Susan Granger (ssg722 AT aol DOT com)October 17th, 2003
Susan Granger's review of "Veronica Guerin" (Buena Vista Films/Disney) This time of year, there are a number of 'performance pieces," showcasing the talents of a star. That's the case here, as Cate Blanchett ("Elizabeth") brings to life the true story of a crusading Irish journalist whose campaign against drug dealers made her a national folk heroine.
In the mid-1990s, unbeknownst to the police, Dublin was an underground war zone with drug lords battling for control. Some 15,000 people a day shot heroin; eight kids under age 15 died in one neighborhood alone. Yet only one curious reporter, Veronica Guerin, realized how pervasive the drug culture was and how Ireland was being used to fuel England's narcotic traffic. Despite her familial obligations as a wife and mother, she was tenaciously determined to expose the culprits - whatever the cost. Unfortunately, writers Carol Doyle and Mary Agnes Donogue remove all suspense and conflict by revealing the ending in the opening minutes of the story.
Directed by Joel Schumacher, luminous Cate Blanchett personifies the intrepid reporter who was shot, beaten up and killed for refusing to back off the Irish Mafia. To her credit, Blanchett tries valiantly to rise above the naive, self-centered recklessness of her martyred character, while Brenda Fricker advises caution as her mother. Ciaran Hinds plays John "The Coach" Traynor, Guerin's manipulative snitch, with Gerard McSorley as the brutal drug lord Gilligan. Colin Farrell does a distracting soccer-fan cameo. (And if the story seems familiar, in 2000, John Mackenzie made "When the Sky Falls" with Joan Allen as Sinead Hamilton, a fictional writer whose exploits were based on Guerin.) On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Veronica Guerin" is a biographical 6, an homage to Cate Blanchett's powerful, pugnacious performance.
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