HEROIC JOURNALIST DESERVES A BETTER FILM

In the mid-90's, there was at least 15,000 heroin users in Dublin,
Ireland. Most of them were underage and lived in the inner city. No
one really paid attention to the epidemic until Veronica Guerin, an
Irish journalist, started writing about it in her columns for the
Sunday Independent. Her work raised public awareness and shed light on
organized crime.

The movie Veronica Guerin, which is based on the last years of her
life, is a tribute to her courage for confronting drug lords and
paying the ultimate price for revealing the truth.

Unfortunately, the project fell into the wrong hands and her heroic
story is reduced to Hollywood cliches. This is understandable,
considering Veronica Guerin was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, the man
responsible for some of the worst films in recent memory including
Armageddon, Bad Boy II, and Pearl Harbor.

Joel Schumacher, who directed Guerin and previously Phone Booth and
8mm, pays more attention to his camera tricks than character
development. The movie is sensationalized with stereotypes of good and
evil characters, Guerin's family and the drug lords of Dublin.

Cate Blanchett, who plays the journalist, doesn't have a thorough
script to work with but manages to deliver a strong performance
anyway. The biggest weakness of the movie is that the script doesn't
explore Guerin's true motivation for going as far as risking her life
to expose these criminals. There's only one scene where she says: "I
have a great life, a great family but I feel like I should be making a
difference."

There's a conflict throughout the movie between Hollywood idealism and
the rawness of the Dublin ghetto. Gritty scenes of children playing
with used syringes in an inner city park and romanticized moments of
Guerin with her picture-perfect family don't seem to belong to the
same movie.

Other tasteless Hollywood touches include a traditional Irish music
soundtrack used to create over-the-top drama and a cameo appearance by
Colin Farrell.

He plays a grungy Dubliner smoking and drinking in the street. His
performance is quite funny because it isn't much of a stretch from his
true personality in television interviews. But the cameo is purely for
entertainment purposes and detracts from the gravity of the movie's
subject matter.

The true story of a journalist who was murdered by a drug lord for
investigating Dublin's gang wars didn't deserve to be dumbed down, but
the fact that her story will begin to get the exposure it deserves
almost makes up for this.

All the tripe in the world can't dilute the film's powerful message
that investigative journalists are on the frontlines, defending the
right to free speech and that Guerin should be regarded as a hero
because she died defending her city from crime and drugs.

Maybe one day her story will get the film it deserves.