Veronica Guerin dir. by Joel Schumacher

Went to see Veronica Guerin last week. It a film based on the true story of Veronica Guerin, a journalist with the Irish Independent who was murdered in 1996 because of her investigations into organised crime in Dublin.

In the film Cate Blanchett plays Veronica and from what I could see the rest of the cast as played by Irish actors (including a wonderful cameo from Colin Farrell). Its a good film, but watching it I couldn’t help but try and compare it to what I would see as real, and obviously as a film it isn’t/wasn’t real. Still overall it was a good film, that doesn’t really take too many liberties with the truth (or at least what I think of as the truth).

The story tells of how Guerin becomes involved with a number of figures from Dublin’s gangland scene, and through her investigations uncovers facts that they would prefer stay hidden. As her articles get more and more publicity the people they are about begin to grow more uset and in the end are prepared to take action to stop their noteriety spreading

I found the ending a bit sickening however; not the murder, but the voice-over telling the film’s audience how everything had changed after the murder, and how the govt had reacted so wonderfully and changed the constitution so that the Criminal Asset Bureau (CAB) was set up. First off our constitution did not need to be changed in order to set up CAB, second of all the govt. can NOT change the Irish constitution, only the Irish voters can do that. But those were little matters I could easily ignore.

My real problem was that it made it seem as though Ireland’s criminal elements had been defeated, and now Dublin was a safe city to live in, with no drug-lords etc. Well obviously the film-makers don’t read the newspapers. A quick google searchwill show otherwise.

Despite all that Veronica Guerin is a film worth seeing, Blanchett does a very good job as Veronica.