A SAD FATE UNFOLDS FOR CATE THE CRUSADER

Cate Blanchett As Irish Anti-Drug Fighter, Journalist Veronica Guerin: Her
Press Card Offered No Immunity From Death.

VERONICA GUERIN

Starring: Cate Blanchett

Playing at: Jackson Square

Rated: 14A

Veronica Guerin may or may not have been a great journalist, but she
was certainly a brave and foolish one. Disturbed by the sight of gangs
selling drugs to children and teenagers in the Dublin of the 1990s,
she began a high-profile, reckless campaign to expose them. Was she
surprised when her campaign ended with her own murder? She must have
been, or she would have gone about it differently.

That she struck a great blow against the Irish drug traffic is without
doubt, but perhaps she could have done so and still survived to raise
her son.

Cate Blanchett plays Guerin in a way that fascinated me for reasons
the movie probably did not intend. I have a sneaky suspicion that
director Joel Schumacher thinks of this as a story of courage and
determination, but what I came away with was a story of boneheaded
egocentrism. There are moments when Guerin seems so wrapped up in her
growing legend and giddy with the flush of the hunt that she barely
notices her patient husband, who seems quite gentle, under the
circumstances, and his suggestions that she consider the danger she's
in and think of their child.

Daily journalism in Britain and Ireland is miles more aggressive than
in North America, no doubt because there is a truly competitive press.
All of Dublin's papers are national, there are additional titles on
Sundays. Guerin was a well-known writer for the Sunday Independent --
"a rag," she says at one point, unfairly. Her good looks and
unbuttoned personality were popular. Sunday journalists go for the
home run, and she hit hers in 1994 when young addicts told her of the
gangs that used them as retailers in the housing projects.

Appalled, she tries to backtrack from the poor street sellers to the
rich men who presumably lurk at a safe remove.

The movie knows more than she does about the gangs, and intercuts her
investigation with horrifying violence used by the gangs to maintain
discipline. You may remember John Boorman's The General (1998),
starring Brendan Gleeson as Martin Cahill, a criminal Robin Hood of
sorts (he stole from the rich and gave to himself). In that film, he
nails a suspected stool pigeon to a snooker table; in Veronica Guerin,
the same character, now played by Gerry O'Brien, is nailing someone to
the floor.

Blanchett dominates the material with a headstrong, extroverted
performance. Her Guerin is heady with excitement, and it doesn't hurt
that enormous billboards promote the investigation by the
Independent's star journalist. Her editors look alternately grateful
and alarmed when she breezes in with another scoop, and we get the
feeling she considers her press card to be a guarantee of immunity --
or at least, a bulletproof vest.

We know she is going to die because that happens in the first five
minutes of the movie. All the rest is flashback, showing how she
arrived at the day of her death.

We cringe at the flamboyant risks she takes -- as when she actually
walks into the house of an Irish mafia kingpin and asks him why he
sells drugs to children.

The film develops an undertone of horror; it's like watching fate
unfold.