Review: Veronica Guerin

Leave it to Joel Schumacher to turn Veronica Guerin into a piece of crude, bland hero worship.

Veronica Guerin
Photo: Touchstone Pictures

Leave it to Joel Schumacher, a populist filmmaker with a knack for oversimplifying complex subject matter, to turn Veronica Guerin into a piece of crude, bland hero worship. Guerin was a reporter for Ireland’s Sunday Independent who, after two years of writing about Dublin’s pervasive drug trade, was gunned down in 1996 by members of the gang she was investigating. Her bravery, born of an inescapable desire to affect change in her community, was laudable, and her story is ripe for an inspirational film. Yet Schumacher approaches his material with all the grace and subtlety of a sledgehammer, and what we get is not unlike an Irish version of Steven Soderbergh’s Erin Brockovich.

Guerin was intent on combating the dealers peddling smack to Dublin’s youth, but the film’s black-and-white moral brushstrokes result in a dramatically inert tribute to a noble martyr. Guerin is, with the exception of two minor moments, always portrayed as firmly resolute in pursuit of the story, even after the possible deadly consequences of her actions become apparent. By not even daring to mildly denounce Guerin for her recklessness and selfishness—especially considering that part of her desire to bring down these narcotics kingpins stemmed from a love of the spotlight—the film becomes a stale and plodding attempt at lionization.

When she’s not exposing drug pushers, Guerin attempts to dispel stereotypes about women in the workplace; her boyish haircut, love of soccer, and professional bluntness lead fellow journalists to derisively insinuate that she’s too masculine for her own good. In fact, every peripheral journalist is depicted as a simpering coward or vile cretin, and their mockery of Guerin has the not-unintended effect of aligning journalists with the film’s criminals.

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Despite the screenplay’s unfortunate dictum that Guerin be a flawless crusader, Cate Blanchett nonetheless turns in a convincingly human performance, and her interplay with Ciarán Hinds as Guerin’s arrogant but cowardly drug-ring contact John Traynor is riveting. For the most part, though, Schumacher is more interested in creating a legend than a realistic account of events, as evidenced by the film’s laughably hokey and naïve coda that leads us to believe that, as a result of Guerin’s efforts, drugs were forever banished from Dublin. Worse, his insipid, obvious direction telegraphs every plot twist, resulting in a movie-going experience where the audience figures things out long before the film’s valiant ace reporter does.

Score: 
 Cast: Cate Blanchett, Gerard McSorley, Ciarán Hinds, Brenda Fricker, Don Wycherley, Barry Barnes, Simon O'Driscoll, Emmet Bergin  Director: Joel Schumacher  Screenwriter: Mary Agnes Donoghue, Carol Doyle  Distributor: Touchstone Pictures  Running Time: 98 min  Rating: R  Year: 2003  Buy: Video, Soundtrack

Nick Schager

Nick Schager is the entertainment critic for The Daily Beast. His work has also appeared in Variety, Esquire, The Village Voice, and other publications.

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