IMDb user comments for
Veronica Guerin (2003)

advertisement

Filter:

Best Chronological Prolific Authors Loved It Hated It Hide Spoilers:

Page 1 of 10:

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]

Index

94 comments in total

---

27 out of 35 people found the following comment useful :-
Good Joel Schumacher effort, 8 March 2004
Author: michelerealini from Switzerland

I've been revaluing Joel Schumacher as a director for some years. I was used to think he was just a typical Hollywood movie maker. But I understood this man does commercial features whenever he needs money ("Batman forever", "Batman & Robin", "The client", "A time to kill"), as he gets it he manages to do good and more personal films.

In fact his mainstream movies are quite boring and mannered. Fortunately Schumacher is much better with more alternative or low-budget films ("Falling down", "Tigerland", "Phone booth"). "Veronica Guerin" belongs to this category.

I'm also happy, in this case, that a blockbuster producer like Jerry Bruckheimer manages not to spoil the movie with artificial tricks.

Veronica Guerin seems to me a symbol of Irish tragicalness. I mean, the tragicalness you can find in works of James Joyce and Oscar Wilde, in stories and legends of Ireland as well. Sadly, her story is true.

The film has the right speed in presenting all the facts, it is simple and well acted -Cate Blanchett's performance is outstanding.

Maybe Joel Schumacher, in the final part, looses a little the sense of rhythm because he wants us to be moved and touched (and we are, indeed. Because it's a shame that a woman and a brave journalist as well had to pay that price). But it's a true story, as I said. The film is valid because it denounces the "conspiracy of silence" and inaction from authorities.

---

21 out of 24 people found the following comment useful :-
Solid True-Story Irish Crime Tale, 19 March 2006

Author: ccthemovieman-1 from Lockport, NY, United States

Cate Blanchett has done it again - played someone you can't take your eyes off of, and not because she's a classic beauty but she's just a good actress and plays such intense roles. Here, she's the single-minded outraged Irish reporter out to expose the drug trafficking in Ireland in the mid 1990s. Yes, it's based on a real person, a very real Veronica Guerin, who took her life in her hands with her desire to have this problem taken care off so the kids in her country wouldn't have such easy access to harmful drugs.

According to the film story, the drug problem was ignored or the police were just ineffective in dealing with it, so Guerin goes after the mob as an investigative reporter. Her husband pleads with her to stop, knowing she could easily be killed. The gangsters were tough and realistically portrayed on film. There is no talk-now-shoot-later nonsense. You mess with them, you will pay. That's the message they give Guerin and you'll have to see the film to find out what happened.

Yup, this is an attention-getter from the start and especially with Blanchett in the lead. A good story and highly recommended.

---

20 out of 26 people found the following comment useful :-
Veronica Guerin, crusading journalist, 26 November 2003

Author: Lawson from Singapore

Veronica Guerin is the kind of journalist I could never, ever be, if I choose to go into that field in the future. She was determined, ballsy, hard-nosed, a risk-taker, and instilled with a bravado that bordered on irrationality. This movie is based on the true story of how Guerin, an Irish reporter, galvanized her country into implementing stricter drug laws and cracking down on drug-related crimes and drug abuse. Veronica Guerin paints her as a modern day Joan of Arc - misunderstood by peers and politicians while she was alive, but made a martyr and heroine after her death. It spans a period of two years, from Guerin's decision to take down Dublin's drug overlord, to her eventual assassination. (I'm not revealing any secrets - she's shot at the beginning before the movie flashes back). Guerin's tenacious reporting-style - poking, prodding, nudging friends and foes alike - was effective, albeit often treacherous - there had been previous attempts on her life before the final, fatal one. It is this that critics pick on in their reviews: Guerin's almost insane tendency to provoke known criminals and gangsters to the point of immediate danger to herself and her family. While it would be somewhat implausible if this were a fictitious story, the story of Veronica Guerin is a true one. Having not read her biography, I have no idea how much the filmmakers have embellished on it, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. With the picture they painted of Guerin, as well as Cate Blanchett's wonderful portrayal of her, I believe that Guerin, in her passion-fuelled moral crusade, would have been that compulsive, and ultimately, that heroic.

As much as I loved the story of Veronica Guerin, crusading journalist, I have some bones to pick with the technical aspects of the movie. One is with the director's tendency to suddenly go into "Blair Witch Cam," or hand-held cam, for those of you who haven't been nauseated by that movie. It's intended to give the movie a documentary feel, but the sudden switches to from fixed to hand-held cams just leave me dizzy. Another problem I had, though a smaller one, was with the schmaltzy-ing of certain scenes, especially the last one, where Celtic songs are played in the background. While I understand the reverrence intended and the relevance of playing Celtic music, I couldn't stop images of the Titanic and Sarah McLachlan (I don't know either) from appearing in my head. A suitably solemn, well-composed, non-Celtic piece would've been much more preferable. But that's just me. 9/10

---

15 out of 19 people found the following comment useful :-
Praise be to the courageous journalist we can trust to keep our world safe..., 14 October 2003
Author: janyeap from Washington, DC

This biographical drama grips me so emotionally from the beginning to the end. The contents are so intense that I could literally feel the strain on my body muscles at its end. Cate Blanchett's performance as Veronica Guerin is top-notched. She brings out a character that Ireland can proudly call a true daughter. Guerin was one journalist whose professionalism and belief prevented her from kowtowing to any corrupted system - even the threat of death. Director Joel Schumacher has created a powerful movie that pays true honor to Guerin.

This film has a superb cast of actors. Their characters come through the screen as very real people. Gerard McSorley's impressive performance as John Gilligan will be unforgettable. Oh yes, watch out for Colin Ferrel's cameo. Director Joel Schumacher's way of introducing the audience to the Sunday Independent newspaper's investigative journalist is so appropriate. It generated my curiosity and urge to get behind the uncanny story of the martyred icon. Yep, I was mesmerized by the Guerin character, following and watching every move and act this energetic woman made – up to a point I started gasping with disbelief. Then the flashback followed. Oh yes, every scene flowed with immense power and spirit to document Guerin's suicidal fanaticism and mission. In a very impressively dramatic, yet easy-to-follow, well paced-way, the story of Guerin's background unfolds. I witnessed the type of dangerous and trouble-filled environment facing her. I saw her as a workaholic mother, surrounded by loving family members who were willing to compromise to her very unconventional traits. I was given hints that there was a softer side within her that she refused to make public. The film provides very subtle indications that speak of Guerin's unusual urge to stay a winner – even as a young girl.

This film carries enough shocking scenes to make me understand the driving force behind her seemingly senseless acts. Every word in the dialogue did fill the gap, offering me a better understanding of her character. Blanchett definitely breathes life into the Guerin character with phenomenal credibility and vitality, allowing her personality to shine with such unique journalistic dedication, honesty, courage, determination and obsession. What I see on screen is a woman with true guts – an absolute winner. `I vow that the eyes of justice, the eyes of this journalist will not be shut again,` Blanchett's character has said. `No hand can deter me from my battle for the truth.' Repeatedly, I saw her facing death threats and physical attacks. My anxiety continued to crush me as I watch the evil surrounding her.

Does it always have to take a murder of a tenacious person to channel out public outcry, disgust and legislative actions to fight a crime? Veronica Guerin paid a price for devoting her career and life to exposing Dublin's drug barons and underworld leaders. I salute her. Like Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, she belongs to the best category of journalists who will make the world a safer place to live. This film captures the same vitality as the inspirational ‘Bloody Sunday.' It's definitely a film not to miss.

A+

---

14 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
Harsh, relentless fact-based story given a rousing treatment., 25 July 2003
Author: silverzero from Dungarvan, IRELAND

Based on the true-life incidents of Irish reporter Veronica Geurin, this film is a gritty, disparate but continuously compelling take on what eventually led to her violent death. And this is one of the few movies to give an accurate impression of Irish natives, cultures, accents etc. This is also an update of 1999's `When the Sky Falls' starring Joan Allen in the Guerin part. Of course `Veronica Geurin' wouldn't have been made had it not been for the fact that they used fictitious names to protect identities in the former.

The blunt realism of it all is what makes it all the more believable and worthwhile. While on initial appearance this may look like Ireland's answer to `Erin Brockovich', the two films are polar opposite. One is a glamorised, feel-good story of a woman making one of the biggest lawsuits in history, while the other is a gritty, downbeat story of how dangerous journalistic work really is. The conclusion to the movie is pre-determined, so it's what builds up to that point is where the movie succeeds.

The Hollywood interpretation of the Irish has been completely flawed in the past. Films like `Ordinary Decent Criminal', `Evelyn' and `The General' gave out a totally unrealistic impression. But `Veronica Geurin' doesn't make a false move and gives a complete expose of what this country really is. Another huge positive is the sheer engagement of it all. Right from the shocking `didn't-know-it-was-the-ending' opening sequence you'll be hooked. Just too bad that the running time is a mere 96 minutes.

Despite being a slightly young choice (only 33), Cate Blanchett was an excellent choice for the title role. She gets the accent just right, physically looks like the title character, and is always convincing. It really is her show, so support is upstaged for the most part. That isn't to say that the supporting parts are bad in any way. Most characters aren't stereotypes and do well in what little role they have. The only exception being a totally irrelevant and inexplicable cameo from Colin Farrell. The part is very small, but it makes a huge difference and is the only scene in which you remember that you're watching a movie. Meanwhile, director Joel Schumacher has proved to have mastered every genre. Well, not so much mastered as much attempted. Let's just say that he is now officially forgiven for the atrocity that was the previous two Batman movies.

Overall, `Veronica Geurin' is a powerful, rousing fast-based story that leaves an unsurprisingly bad taste. But if you want a new-wave gritty thriller, then this is the film for you. You don't have to be aware of the incident to enjoy the movie, but it would help. My IMDb rating: 7.0/10.

---

10 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
Cate Blanchett Exposes Hollywood, 15 December 2005

Author: ray-280 from Philadelphia

Just as Veronica Guerin exposed Ireland's underworld drug dealers, Cate Blanchett's marvelous portrayal of Irish journalist-turned-anti-drug-crusader Veronica Guerin seemed to have the actress on a mission to prove that you don't have to look like a pop diva or act like a porn star to be a compelling female lead in a film.

Like many films with an ethnic flavor, we get a supporting cast of ethnic actors in slightly elevated roles from the norm. Most notable from that category are Gerard McSorley as the evil drug-lord, John Gilligan, and Ciaran Hands as street thug John Traynor, who plays both sides of the fence throughout the film.

The story is painful, not only because of what happens to Guerin, but in our knowing that her courage is a direct reaction to our general apathy towards wrongdoing, with so many of us looking the other way that the Veronica Guerins of the world are encouraged to fight evil after the fact, but left as sitting ducks or thrown to the wolves while they are still alive and making noise.

If there's one lesson every viewer of this film should exit with, it is that those of us who are not part of the solution, are part of the problem.

---

7 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Moving, unsentimental account of a remarkable woman, 18 August 2003

Author: LouiseDE from Reigate, UK

This was an extremely moving film, covering the life and death of the remarkable Veronica Guerin.

It would have been easy to sentimentalize this story, but it unfolded in a realistic, down-to-earth fashion that somehow made Guerin's death all the more harrowing.

However, Guerin was not painted as a tragic figure, but was shown throughout as a flawed and all-too-human figure (the incident with the skateboard at her son's party was very telling) who felt that she just HAD to continue with her crusade.

It is impossible to over-praise Cate Blanchett's performance, varying from flirtatious and humorous to passionate and driven.

Not an easy film to watch, but one that I cannot recommend highly enough.

---

13 out of 21 people found the following comment useful :-
Good but not great, 3 August 2004

Author: moviefan2003va from Washington, DC

What a woman she was! Let's start off with good points. I think this movie had a great cast. I think everyone was perfect. The problem probably comes with the filmmakers being American. I'm an American so I think I'm qualified to say this. Sometimes you need to be from the same culture to understand subtle and cultural things that are not evident to the naked eye so to speak. The movie somehow doesn't delve deep enough for us to understand why Guerin takes these incredible risks. Perhaps we should have learned more about her background to understand this unflinching courage she had. It may have also been beneficial to make the underworld figures she encounters more layered. Either way, it is a good introductory film to this incredible woman. Perhaps a homespun filmmaker can make another movie about her. I reiterate that I thought the casting was terrific! Cate Blanchett is one in a million. I felt her performance was oscar caliber.

---

10 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
Let's give the man a pass this time, 4 October 2003
Author: Chris Knipp from Berkeley, California

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Joel Schumacher's Veronica Guerin is a conventional, rather flashy biopic about a fighting Irish journalist who gave her life to expose the role of drug bosses in the disintegrating fabric of Dublin life. Mr. Schumacher has not had an outstanding record as a committed filmmaker and has produced more than anybody's fair share of tasteless clinkers, but it's a bit more difficult to fault him here even if his take errs toward the melodramatic.

Veronica Guerin, played with her usual dash – perhaps too much dash and not enough sweat -- by Cate Blanchett, was murdered by a drug lord named Gilligan and her death galvanized the public to demonstrate and thus to end the dominance of drug dealers in Dublin when the Irish Parliament passed a law allowing the assets of suspected drug dealers to be seized, a decisive step that sealed the dealers' doom, or so the movie tells us. Cate's Irish accent is pretty good. Is she like the real Guerin? She seems a bit too pretty and delicate for that. The movie gives away that Guerin was murdered right at the beginning so I'm not revealing any secrets; it's even in the trailers.

The colors are highly saturated, so the gangster's uniform black leather jackets go dark. This is a colorful, good-looking film. Veronica was fearless, or as her mum says, learned not to show her fear. She was bold, she was courageous, and even when she was shot in the leg, badly beaten by Gilligan himself, and threatened with the kidnapping of her little son Erin, she went on. It was after getting off with only a £100 fine for £1800 worth of traffic tickets, driving back from a country courthouse, that she was fatally shot by one of Gilligan's men. Her death became more important than her life, because of the effect it had.

This is the story. There is no subtlety to the presentation of Veronica. Blanchett makes her cheerful, daring, elegant and unflappable except when she's horribly menaced or assaulted, when she staggers a bit. Whet we do see is that she brings pain to those around her as well as herself, to her mother, her husband, even her colleagues and boss. In a good cause, of course. But the moral issue is there: that the crusader against unscrupulous foes may also be a selfish person in the sense that she chooses to drag others into danger with her. There are hints (a string of front-page stories, a huge poster on a bus) that Veronica sought fame and got it and that her life was an uneasy mixture of saintliness and reckless endangerment. Schumacher's version of her life doesn't make any choices. He highlights the recklessness, and then canonizes Guerin in a sentimental final sequence. Instead of dwelling so much on either possibility, he might have gone into more detail about how an investigative reporter actually works as well as what the Irish druglords' history was.

Schumacher may be most remembered for a couple of Brat Pack movies, St. Elmo's Fire (1985) and Flatliners (1990). He has a taste for sensationalism and courtroom drama, but has tended to alternate disastrous pop clinkers like Batman & Robin (1997), 8MM (1999), and Flawless (1999) with attempts to garner credibility like Tigerland (2000), with its mild antiwar posturing, or the faux-profound Falling Down, with Michael Douglas as an unemployed worker in L.A. who goes berserk in protest against the vague wrongs of modern life. He has seemed more at home and more successful with a good, hokey thriller like the well acted The Client (1994) or his recent Phone Booth (2002), a vehicle for the young Irish-born action star, Colin Farrell, than with anything having potential social significance or intellectual content. Coming from a director who seems most notable for flashy mediocrity, Veronica Guerin is a surprisingly decent effort. It lacks the melancholy grandeur of the Godfather epics or the stylish ironies of neo-noir and it isn't the least bit intellectually challenging, but for what it is it's clean and it packs a punch. UK writers, however, have pointed to another, Irish film version of Guerin's story (which I have not seen) as superior, and have dwelt on the conventionality, melodrama, and sentimentality of the movie. Is that why it seemed like an unusually glossy and ultimately forgettable TV drama? It played in England this summer and showed at the Montreal Festival last month; it opens October 17, 2003 in the US. It may fare better critically in the US than it did in England. With Jerry Bruckheimer as the producer, it would seem fated to do well at the American box office. --Well, that's not fate; that's money!

---

6 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Great Film, 31 January 2004

Author: gerrymcd from Dundalk,Ireland

As an n irish person i was expecting a bad film with joel shumacher directing but this is a great film.

great because of the way veronica dedicated her life to something that was right.

cate blanchet is superb and its sad that it took her death for the irish gorvernment to do something.

an inspirational Film 8/10

---

---

Page 1 of 10:

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]

Add another comment

---

Related Links

Plot summary	Ratings	Awards
Newsgroup reviews	External reviews	Plot keywords
Main details	Your user comments	Your vote history