In a role that would have gone to Sally Field, Meryl Streep or Jessica Lange not long ago (and went quite well to Joan Allen only three years ago), Aussie Cate Blanchett helps out poor actress-deprived Ireland by starring as the titular national heroine. In 1994, dismayed at gritty second-unit POV shots of syringes and a broken crack spoon lying in the gutter of a dramatically grim Dublin slum, the feisty suburban wife and mother of one decides to take on the local drug barons more or less singlehandedly. Catching a lead from a teenage junkie prostitute (Laurence Kinlan, sharp and spooky), she follows the stench of Dublin's heroin trade toward a sensationally violent drug lord named John Gilligan (Gerard McSorley), who has lost his hair and become very nasty. With him lies Guerin's destiny, prompting revolutionary changes in Irish culture and law.
It's a twisty path for the Sunday Independent's intrepid new reporter, and the unprecedented nature of her inquiry wreaks havoc for all concerned. Encouraged very generally by her mother, Bernadette (Brenda Fricker), and very specifically by her chummy editor, Willie (Mark Lambert), Veronica boldly -- even smugly -- exposes all she can about the local scum. Briefly, this includes gangster Martin Cahill (Gerry O'Brien), recently immortalized in John Boorman's superb The General. This also includes Guerin's very ambivalent contact with underworld poseur John Traynor (spot-on Ciar´n Hinds), who not only dishes her tips, but tends the pseudo-royal court and intricate money-laundering scheme of nobody's little buddy Gilligan. Soon enough (say, about forty minutes in), danger comes calling for the increasingly high-profile Veronica, her young son, Cathal (Simon O'Driscoll), and her somewhat thick husband, Graham (Barry Barnes), who doesn't quite grasp that when there's a fresh bullet hole in your front window, you really don't stand in plain view staring at it.
To be sure, Veronica Guerin is a well-built machine, and judging by its enthusiastic reception in Ireland (where a quarter of the population has seen it), it captures the essence of the real Guerin, whose murder, offered in the film's opening minutes, literally changed a nation. (May the same be said of Sweden's recently slain foreign minister Anna Lind very soon.) Personally, I'd say that Mr. T in a pert blond wig with a dialect tape could have squeaked by in this sort of stock characterization -- "Yo, foo', I'm da benevolent voice o' troof!" -- but Blanchett indeed does the character justice. The movie's cut so tightly that it plays like a series of flash cards, but throughout her struggles -- familial, professional and downright dangerous -- Guerin indeed comes across as a fantastic role model.
But let's leave the toss-off terms like "triumph" and "shattering" and "Oscar bait" to critics busy paying off their SUVs. From its opening "cute" moments of Guerin beating 1,200 parking tickets, to the requisite cell-phone jabber, to her groovy little dance to -- natch, again -- U2 , this is a very manipulative movie. We're railroaded into adoring Guerin and her righteousness -- into saying "Hey, that's me!" -- right up to the fatal gunshots being fired directly in our face. While the movie is indeed touching and very politically significant, there's something peculiar about never learning exactly what made ace reporter Guerin so intensely obsessive about this topic. As there's not even a molecule of dirt on Saint Veronica, we're left to guess, which leaves her cinematic martyrdom a bit predictable and unsatisfying.
The same is true of When the Sky Falls -- which began development in 1995 with the real Guerin as an advisor -- but to a lesser extent. Guerin's director, Joel Schumacher, knows how to work an audience, and his recent, weirdly moralistic Phone Booth was nothing if not a popper (Guerin also happens to feature a cameo from Colin Farrell, in his 500th appearance this year). But Sky Falls director John Mackenzie delivers Guerin (renamed Sinéad Hamilton, otherwise identical) with an overall less melodramatic tone; even her torn, bloody stockings are less fetishized. Why his film's American distribution was effectively snuffed remains a mystery.
Veronica Guerin's mega-money producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, claims at the time of this writing that he hasn't even seen When the Sky Falls. Yeah, right. This from the man who shrugged at a recent Q & A: "If somebody would have told me that Pirates of the Caribbean -- a movie based on a Disney ride and starring Johnny Depp -- would have been the highest-grossing action movie of the year so far, I would have said, 'You're out of your mind!'" Whoa, dude -- somebody open a window. Let's address the market and motivating factors. Why not just come right out and say: "Ireland sure is pretty; let's buy it."
Since Veronica Guerin is about drugs, and movies are very potent drugs, it stands to reason: If you'd like to find a fully satisfying score, it is wise to learn as much as possible about your pusher.
