Veronica Guerin

By EWAN McDONALD

(Herald rating: * * * )

If there's a thin line between madness and genius, Veronica Guerin straddled both sides. Before this movie arrived in our cinemas last year with the star-power of Cate Blanchett in the leading role, few New Zealanders had heard of the Dublin journalist and mother who campaigned to expose the gangs selling drugs to youngsters in her home town — until she was murdered in 1996.

I've spoken to Irish journalists who were working in the city at the same time as the real-life Guerin. Neither has seen the movie. For the one who sees her as "a ballsy woman who had a major role to play in exposing the major players in the criminal underworld in Dublin", there is another who recalls being at work in the newsroom on the night she was killed, and uses words like "obsessive" and "crazy" and worries about the son left behind.

And just to get the factual stuff out of the way before we launch into the Hollywood version of her life, Guerin wrote for the Sunday Independent, sister paper of the New Zealand Herald.

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Joel Schumacher, two moviemakers who usually get more bucks for their bangs (Pearl Harbor, 8mm, Batman and Robin), strike an uncharacteristically sensitive tone in this story, perhaps down to the employment of Irish writers Carol Doyle and Mary Agnes Donoghue and a largely Irish cast.

It begins with her shocking death: on her way home from beating yet another speeding ticket in her bright red sports car, she is stopped at a traffic light outside Dublin, talking to a police contact on her phone, when a motorbike pulls up beside her car and a hitman carries out his contract.

Two years earlier Guerin, as a lengthy flashback explains, had been appalled to learn about the gangs who were selling hard drugs to kids in the Dublin slums. For the fairly pedestrian reporter who had been assigned to uncovering scandals in the church, it was the beginning of a crusade. Soon, Guerin is investigating the activities of Martin Cahill, the notorious Irish gangster whose tale was rather glorified in John Boorman's movie The General.

Cahill and several cronies were killed throughout 1994, gangland murders that were initially attributed to the IRA. Guerin believed, however, that this was an old-style turf war between competing gangs. She calls on her earlier training as an accountant to follow the money trail.

At this point there is some disagreement about Guerin: some commentators believe she went easy on the IRA's drug connections because an inside contact was feeding her significant and convenient information. She targets another crime lord, John Gilligan (Gerard McSorley).

Now, Guerin is a target. A bullet through her window. A second bullet in her leg. She turns up on Gilligan's doorstep and is beaten up for her trouble.

Predictably, everyone will warn her off the story, especially her husband, who is concerned for her life and the future of their son.

She writes off critical members of her profession as chickens who steer clear of the hard stories. There can be only one ending, the ending that we saw at the beginning.

And that, perhaps, is the weakness of this film. Blanchett is suitably gung-ho, bigger than life, driven; McSorley threatening, Colin Farrell wasted in a cameo. But the story has been telescoped into a predictable series of vignettes rather than an unfolding drama, and one wonders whether the director knew what he wanted: a crime story, an empowering story of a unique if flawed woman, a history.

The DVD offers a rich 2.35:1 anamorphic transfer and a suitable graphic soundtrack. Those wanting to learn more about the real Guerin will be disappointed because there's little footage or information, apart from the video of a short speech to the Committee to Protect Journalists (honestly). That is followed by the film version of the same speech, which was deleted from the movie.

Schumacher and the writers provide commentary tracks. Both offer more information about Guerin and the writers, in particular, admit that they took dramatic liberties with her story and left out much important historical information. Apart from those items, you'll find a few trailers and Schumacher's photo library.

* DVD, video rental June 16