director
Joel Schumacher
screenwriters
Carol Doyle
Mary Agnes Donoghue
story by
Carol Doyle
producer
Jerry Bruckheimer
cinematographer
Brendan Galvin
music
Harry Gregson-Williams
editor
David Gamble
cast
Cate Blanchett (Veronica Guerin)
Gerard McSorley (John Gilligan)
Ciarán Hinds (John Traynor)
Brenda Fricker (Bernie Guerin)
Don Wycherley (Chris Mulligan)
Barry Barnes (Graham Turley)
Simon O'Driscoll (Cathal Turley)
Emmet Bergin (Aengus Fanning)
Charlotte Bradley (Anne Harris)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 92m
irish
release: July 11, 2003
u.s.
release: October 17,
2003
video
availability: TBA
official
website
other joel
schumacher films
reviewed on this website:
- batman
forever
- batman
and robin
- 8mm
- falling
down
- phone
booth
- a
time to kill
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The goal of Veronica Guerin
is transparent: not to point out the drug problems in Dublin
-- which are distant to all but those who live there -- but to
make a tragic Irish version of Erin
Brockovich, with a matching Oscar for Cate Blanchett.
Guerin, a sort of folk hero in Ireland (or a martyr -- same difference),
reported on crime for the popular Dublin paper the Sunday
Independent and, according to the legend, got a little too
close to the drug lords for comfort; she was shot to death in
1996, at age 38, while sitting in her car at a traffic light.
The movie begins with the murder, then backtracks two years to
re-enact Guerin's reportorial crusade against drug dealers.
The way the movie, energetically
if impersonally directed by Joel Schumacher, tells it, Veronica
was moved to action by the sight of little children playing with
the syringes left in the street by heroin addicts. As some critics
have noted, though, the focus of the real Guerin's journalistic
wrath was not heroin dealers, but marijuana dealers. That might
explain why the movie's Veronica is barely shown talking to (let
alone writing about) drug addicts, except to grill them on where
they get the stuff. Her emphasis is entirely on the Bad Guys
pushing drugs to children. Fair enough, but it doesn't make for
a terribly provocative movie. Why did Veronica tilt at the drug-traffic
windmill to the extent of endangering herself and her husband
and young son? According to the film, because she Just Wasn't
Going to Back Down.
Working with a worshipful (and
Guerin-family-approved) script by Carol Doyle and Mary Agnes
Donoghue, Schumacher can't even get his usual tacky excitement
going. The movie is simply a series of escalating threats on
Veronica's life, until finally she's done in -- on orders from
the drug kingpin (Gerard McSorley in a cartoon-vicious performance)
she's been tailing, the film strongly implies. (Some have theorized
that Guerin's murder wasn't as simple as that, and speak of cover-ups
and shady characters under the protection of the Garda, Ireland's
police force.) In a few scenes, mostly dealing with Ciarán
Hinds as a sad-sack crime underling who serves as Veronica's
secret source, we get a sense of the uniquely Irish flavor of
the underworld. But then it's back to another not especially
involving domestic scene with Veronica goofing around with her
kid or scoffing at the concerns of various family members. After
a while, every scene becomes a testament to Veronica's courage,
Veronica's strength, Veronica's indomitable spirit.
It should be said that Cate
Blanchett does a lot to clip the angel wings off herself. She
makes muckraking look sexy -- to her, unmasking the criminal
element is wicked, dirty fun, and she enjoys their discomfort
when she strides among them with an air of serene implacability.
Blanchett seems to be acting in a better, more complex movie,
wherein Veronica rubs elbows with underworld swine because she
likes it. Lest we miss the point that Veronica is just
like the rest of us, the script points up her addiction to football
(or soccer, as we call it) -- she decompresses by kicking a ball
around in the backyard -- though this doesn't do much for the
movie except provide an excuse for a two-time Schumacher star
to pop in for an uncredited cameo as a rough, tattooed football
fan with whom Veronica chats on the street. He comes on to her
cheerfully, as if he'd been watching the movie; certainly no
one else notices the sensual vibe of bravado Blanchett sends
off.
Schumacher really tries our
patience at the end, though; Veronica gets her wings after all,
and Blanchett, dead in the front seat of a car, can't do anything
about it. Word of her murder spreads, which seems to devastate
everyone in Ireland. Sinead O'Connor sings mournfully on the
soundtrack as the streets are clogged with mourners. A narrator
reassures us that there was a massive crackdown on drug crime
directly after Guerin's death, and that the crime rate went down
15 percent. Actually, things didn't stay that way for long; according
to a story in Guerin's paper the Sunday
Independent last summer, "Three killings within the
two days surrounding the premiere of the Veronica Guerin
movie and a total of almost 50 unsolved gangland murders in Dublin
since her death in 1996, together with an unprecedented rise
in drug-trafficking and armed criminal activity nationwide, demonstrate
that the anti-crime packages that were to have been her legacy
have not worked. The prediction of senior gardai is that gangland
violence, at its highest levels due mainly to the large amount
of modern weapons coming into the country with drug consignments,
will continue to worsen in the immediate future." Of course,
we hear nothing of this from the movie, which sends us out ready
to canonize Veronica -- though the film itself has already, falsely,
done it.
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