Cate Blanchett in Veronica Guerin
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+ another review by Cynthia Fuchs
Energizer
"If you're not pissing people off, you're not doing your job," an old but not particularly crusty editor of mine once told me. It was good career advice. An ambitious journalist could do worse than to raise public consciousness on an important issue and/or bring down a public figure, thus inflaming the accused and partisan readers alike. Fierce ambition and good work do pay off, sometimes.
The topple-the-leader strategy, applied to the Nixon White House and brought to life by two determined reporters in the pages of the Washington Post, led to a hail of glory, book deals, and, not least, the resignation of an American President. Journalism schools notched record enrollments in the wake of Watergate. Hot-shit newsies, as it turned out, made acceptable action figures in most of the subsequent great and not-so-great movies about the news media, from All the President's Men (1976) to Absence of Malice (1981) to The Insider (1999).
Veronica Guerin, the real-life journalist played by a typically intense, hyper-alert, and sexy-powerful Cate Blanchett in the uneven movie named for the reporter, clearly gets her kicks from putting the screws to the subjects of her investigations. She derives palpable pleasure from gaining access to and slamming questions into the faces of the toughest of the tough in Dublin, up to and including the city's most powerful, most brutal gangsters and Members of Parliament.
Guerin, like more than a few workaholic, risk-taking reporters, gets off on playing martyr for the news. Rival reporters at a Dublin watering hole publicly question the woman's motivation. Is it all just a disguise for sadomasochism? Does she enjoy ambushing her interviewees as much as she does getting the physical souvenirs of her encounters and the attendant publicity? Maybe so: beaten, bruised, and recovering in a hospital, she declines the comforting touches of her affectionate husband (Barry Barnes), so as not to miss a moment of the television coverage of her most recent run-in with a baddie. Pissing people off, and reveling in the resultant glory, is the point. But her longstanding belief that her targets won't "kill the messenger" proves unfounded, when, eventually, Guerin pisses off the wrong people.
Her story, or another facsimile, was first told on screen three years ago, in When the Sky Falls, starring Joan Allen. The new version, directed by Joel Schumacher and shot on location in Dublin, hews closer to what happened, and boasts a far bigger budget and glitzier production values. After opening with a brief prologue set in 1996, the film flashes back to 1994. The reporter, semi-famous for writing about Church corruption and crime, has wearied of her recent puffy assignments. After a visit to a shooting gallery in a rundown apartment building, where heroin needles are trampled underfoot and raccoon-eyed teenagers talk about their addictions, Guerin determines to change the focus of her work. "They're making major bucks," she says of the city's drug dealers, all dandied up and jetting around town in shiny black BMWs. "That's what I should be writing about."
Guerin makes haste on her pledge, soon pressing previous crime news source John "The Coach" Traynor (Ciarán Hinds) for information. She knocks on the doors of homes occupied by the most feared criminals in town, including Martin "The General" Cahill (Gerry O'Brien) and John Gilligan (Gerard McSorley), a short, bad-tempered man best described as a volcano on the verge of eruption. "We're just ordinary decent criminals," one villain says, offering a direct reference to a 2000 movie which also featured McSorley (and Colin Farrell, who appears briefly in Veronica Guerin).
The reporter, whether fearless or foolhardy (Schumacher and screenwriters Carol Doyle and Mary Agnes Donoghue vote for the former), survives a beating, a bullet through the front window of her home, a shot in the leg, and, most disturbing, a horrifying threat on the life of her young son (Simon O'Driscoll). But Guerin keeps going... and going ...and going... until she's stopped. After all, that's her face on the sides of city buses, in advertisements for the Sunday Independent. She can't do otherwise, as she repeatedly tells friends and family: "I don't want to do it. I have to do it." The cops, it seems, can't or won't do the job of nailing the scumbags. And Guerin, unlike the competition, has the good sense to follow the money trail. Still, the film doesn't examine her perseverance, in the face of imminent danger to herself and her significant others.
The film's closing moments reveal that her sacrifice was almost immediately meaningful: Dublin's crime rate, and instances of heroin addiction, dropped significantly as a result of her work. Drug dealers were forced off the streets by neighborhood watch groups, and crime lords and their minions were rounded up and carted off to jail, sometimes after being extradited from other countries. Laws were changed, allowing for easier access to incriminating tax records.
Veronica Guerin, taut and tense in most of the right places, is bolstered by its stars' courageous turns. We root for Guerin and reel in the face of Gilligan's evil eye(s) and brutal punches. Brendan Galvin's evocative cinematography, of drug-infested neighborhoods, bustling newsrooms, and lively pubs, also illuminates Guerin's world.
Still, the movie suffers from moments of overripe melodrama. Maybe Schumacher and super-producer Jerry Bruckheimer couldn't keep their respective inner crowd-pleasers from taking over, as when scenes of domestic tranquility (Guerin, her husband, and son dance together to an old pop tune) alternate with images of rousing violence. The extended, operatic final sequence, as the camera hovers above the sunroof of Guerin's car, the site of her murder, crowds line the streets for her funeral, and heavy strings saw out a minor chord, is painfully obvious in its intent to elicit tears. The messenger has been killed. But by what rights does the reporter become the news?
— 16 October 2003
