Well-meaning but simpleminded.
Veronica Guerin (2003)
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Reviews Counted:34
Fresh:15
Rotten:19
Average Rating:5.4/10
Consensus: Cate Blanchett gives another great performance in a movie that doesn't shed much light on its title character.
Rated: R [See Full Rating] for violence, language and some drug content
Runtime: 1 hr 38 mins
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:Oct 17, 2003 Limited
Box Office: $1,511,180
Synopsis: VERONICA GUERIN, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Joel Schumacher, is the true story of the tenacious Irish crime reporter (Cate Blanchett) who exposed the brutal drug trade in 1990s... VERONICA GUERIN, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Joel Schumacher, is the true story of the tenacious Irish crime reporter (Cate Blanchett) who exposed the brutal drug trade in 1990s Dublin. Veronica Guerin's intense dedication to her journalism, reckless hunger for the truth, and profound sense of social responsibility is grippingly portrayed by Blanchett in a magnetic performance. Told in flashback, the film begins at the moment of her brutal assassination in 1996 and moves backwards, telling the story of the last two years of her life. A competitive journalist with no drug background, Veronica started her fierce campaign against Dublin's drug trade after witnessing young children playing with hypodermic needles in the city's slums. At that moment she started interviewing addicts and small-time thugs and what she discovered eventually led her into a fiercely protected inner circle of drug kingpins, controlled by the viciously powerful John Gilligan (Gerard McSorley). What began as a search for a story became Veronica's obsession. Her quest overshadowed her duties as a wife and mother and eventually threatened the lives of her husband and child. Heroic yet reckless, she persevered, and after threats and violent beatings she was assassinated by the very gangsters she threatened to expose. [More]
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Gerard McSorley, Ciaran Hinds, Brenda Fricker
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Gerard McSorley, Ciaran Hinds, Brenda Fricker
Director: Joel Schumacher
Director: Joel Schumacher
Screenwriter: Carol Doyle, Mary Agnes Donoghue
Story: Carol Doyle
Producer: Jerry Bruckheimer
Composer: Harry Gregson-Williams
Studio: Touchstone Pictures
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Release:
Mar 16, 2004
Reviews for Veronica Guerin
While I was watching Veronica Guerin, starring Cate Blanchett, I kept imagining the movie it might have been before director Joel Schumacher and producer Jerry Bruckheimer got their hands on it.
As movie material, Veronica Guerin's life could have benefited from the gutsy probing the woman herself was renowned for.
You don't need subtlety for a movie like this -- which is fortunate considering that Schumacher is the director -- but you need a kind of craft that Schumacher doesn't possess.
The movie never adequately explains the inner conflicts that led its relentless-reporter heroine to die.
More researched than truly felt, the movie fails to dramatize a number of crucial elements.
What you expect from a feature film, especially one made seven years after her death, is the further matter of why she did so. Alas, that tricky little 'W' gets barely a mention.
Veronica Guerin is the kind of edifying movie that Hollywood loves and critics are often deeply suspicious of: a film that celebrates the heroic. If not for Cate Blanchett's compelling performance we'd have just cause.
Watchable as it is, Veronica Guerin doesn't really take us deep inside Veronica's psyche.
Cate Blanchett plays Guerin in a way that fascinated me for reasons the movie probably did not intend.
Made gripping almost single-handedly by Blanchett's superlative performance.
Latest News for Veronica Guerin
May 11, 2005:
Fox Searchlight to Do a "Scandal" with Blanchett & Dench
From the pages of Variety comes news of the timely drama "Notes From a Scandal," which is based on Zoe Heller's novel "What Was She Thinking?" Cate Blanchett... More...
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