DIR: Joel Schumacher • WRI: Carol Doyle, Mary Agnes Donoghue • PROD: Jerry Bruckheimer • CAST: Cate Blanchett, Gerard McSorley, Don Wycherly, Colin Farrell
I have this friend who believes that almost all films based on real-life stories are inherently flawed. When I asked him why, he replied (and I’m paraphrasing here): “Real-life stories don’t have proper endings.” They don’t have proper middles or beginnings either, but that’s beside the point. Take two recent examples (both of which, for possibly unrelated reasons, star Denzel Washington), Remember the Titans and The Hurricane.
I knew nothing of the real-life background before I saw the films, yet I couldn’t shake the feeling (especially during The Hurricane) that something wasn’t quite right. The way the stories unfolded felt a little like the wool was being pulled over your eyes, so gently that you could barely feel it. Remember the Titans, incidentally, was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, the driving force behind (finally) Veronica Guerin.
There’s something you really ought to know about this film. It may seem obvious (hell, it is obvious), but it’s rather important. Veronica Guerin was shot in Dublin with a predominantly Irish cast and crew, intended primarily for an American audience with little or no knowledge of the actual events that inspired it. So here’s the rub: it’s not exactly (a hushed sob here) truthful. Half of you are no doubt floored by this stunning revelation, while the other half are getting bored waiting for the inevitable list of how Veronica Guerin (the icon) differs from Veronica Guerin (the person).
Well, there isn’t one. This is just a film review and my word count is limited. So Veronica Guerin isn’t accurate… big deal. Neither was All the President’s Men, yet it remained a thoughtful and exciting glimpse at politics and investigative journalism. Now, people have accused Jerry Bruckheimer (and to a lesser extent, director Joel Schumacher) of many things, but thoughtful is not one of them. For many, the biggest revelation about Veronica Guerin is that it isn’t as bad as it could have been. I’ve heard stories (from nameless, unsubstantiated sources, naturally) of Jerry Bruckheimer surveying the syringe-strewn set and complaining that there weren’t enough burning prams.
A talented cast is hobbled by a script that bookends Guerin’s life as a latter-day St Patrick, whose sacrifice prompts the enforced exile of evil drug dealers across the city. Blanchett’s performance is appealing; her accent, by and large, is flawless. Sadly, she is given a dull, by-the-numbers family life that plays like a kooky-free version of Ally McBeal. Somewhat more entertaining is our heroine’s relationship with the heroes (friendly journalists, policemen), villains (unfriendly journalists, drug dealers) and miscellaneous (prostitutes, drug addicts and Colin Farrell) on the mean streets of Dublin’s not-so-fair city.
I wonder if foreign audiences will react to the film in the same way that I reacted to The Hurricane or Remember the Titans. Veronica Guerin is slick and well-made entertainment, but it is littered with a little too many corner-cutting clichés. Our heroine can never walk into a room and say “Hello”; instead, she sidles up to someone with a crafty look in her eye, the first words out of her mouth another tired variation of “Well, a little bird told me…” The Fields of Athenryplays over the final montage, leaving us with a nice, cosy denouement where evil is thwarted through an uncomfortable mix of legal proceedings and mob justice.
On an interesting side note, if you rearrange the adjectives in the Jerry Bruckheimer press biography, you have a possible formula for the most successful movie ever: “A raucously gripping action comedy!” All you budding wannabes, take note.
An alternative review of Veronica Guerin by Niall Kitson appears in Film Ireland 93.
Veronica Guerin is in cinemas on 11th July 2003.