Veronica Guerin Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)October 6th, 2003
Planet Sick-Boy: http://www.sick-boy.com
"We Put the SIN in Cinema"
© Copyright 2003 Planet Sick-Boy. All Rights Reserved.
There were three high-profile biopics unveiled at the 2003 Toronto International Film Festival, and two of them were about print journalists with very different work ethics. One was Shattered Glass, about New Republic writer Stephen "The Original Jayson Blair" Glass, while the other chose to focus on the exact same subject covered in 2000 festival entry When the Sky Falls.
Falls, which practically vanished off the face of the Earth after Toronto (it eventually premiered on Showtime), told the tragic tale of Dublin's Sunday Independent investigative journalist Veronica Guerin, only without using Guerin's name because its producers couldn't afford to acquire the rights. Enter the suddenly omnipresent producer Jerry Bruckheimer, and you get Veronica Guerin, a flashier, more manipulative, but in absolutely no way better version directed by the increasingly erratic (and growingly inconsequential) Joel Schumacher.
Here, Falls' Joan Allen is replaced by Cate Blanchett (The Two Towers) in the lead role of a journalist hell-bent on doing something about her city's sudden rise in heroin consumption, as well as the usual crimes related to the rampant use of that drug. The ManU-loving Veronica has the tenacity of a pitbull, as well as the hair of Princess Di, but it's the former than makes her husband Graham (Barry Barnes) and mother (Brenda Fricker) concerned for her safety. Even Veronica's editor (Emmet Bergin) thinks his star reporter goes too far to get a story, but nobody seems able to stop her from putting herself in harm's way.
Veronica's investigation into the skag trade leads her into a seedy underworld which contains the likes of Martin "The General" Cahill (Gerry O'Brien). She's fed information by an informant (Ciarán Hinds, The Cradle of Life) with close ties to the area's big drug kingpin (Gerard McSorley, Bloody Sunday). She butts heads and takes risks, and before long Veronica is beaten, shot in the leg and has some disturbingly specific threats made against her young son (Simon O'Driscoll). But does that stop her? Absolutely not.
One of the problems I have with Guerin (the film, not the woman) is the fact the filmmakers reveal the ending of the story in both the trailer and in the opening minutes of the film itself. Because Guerin is not a well-known personality on this side of the Atlantic, this gravely diminishes the impact of the climax to the point where everything leading up to it becomes rather trivial from a cinematic standpoint. That is, unless you're a Colin Farrell fan, because Shumacher's boy-toy makes a brief appearance here as an Irish hooligan.
As gifted as Blanchett is, she never really connects with the audience, and I don't think it's her fault so much as Schumacher's. The Batman butcher seems unable to decide whether to make Guerin a gritty, realistic drama, or sell out and make it all flashy and Hollywood. The result is, as one would expect, a mixed bag at best. A main hindrance is that Guerin's bad guys just don't seem very threatening, and Veronica never appears to be frightened of them. Is she naďve, stupid or relentless? We never really find out.
1:32 - R for violence, language and some drug content
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
