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Veronica Guerin (2003)
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Reviews Counted:134
Fresh:72
Rotten:62
Average Rating:5.9/10
Consensus: Cate Blanchett gives another great performance in a movie that doesn't shed much light on its title character.
Runtime: 1 hr 38 mins
Genre: Dramas
US 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
Reviews for Veronica Guerin
Cate Blanchett gives a tour de force performance as Veronica Guerin under Joel Schumacher's direction of a no-nonsense script by Carol Doyle and Mary Agnes Donoghue.
Cate Blanchett is a vital presence as Veronica and should have romantic teenagers lining up to get into journalism school.
While this is a movie that deserves a mildly favourable recommendation, it's also nothing short of a catastrophic fumble and an incredible lost opportunity.
A moving but gritty story of willpower and sacrifice that stops pleasingly short of a Hollywood varnish-job.
If you take out Cate Blanchett's amazing performance, you're left with a dull husk of a film from a director who knows little about filmmaking.
Blanchett gets the accent impeccably, and encompasses both the woman's determined heroism and her delight in the picture byline, but neither she nor the screenplay digs any deeper than secular hagiography.
Cate Blanchett is most likely the greatest actress working in film today.
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.
Sporting a perfect Irish accent, [Cate Blanchett] imbues the character with a lot more presence than the script (and the director?) called for.
Guerin has the outward appearance of a quaint but brutal Irish gem like the works of Jim Sheridan and Neil Jordan, but looks are deceiving
Veronica Guerin is a sharp study of the vices that sometimes goad us to virtue.
What you will take away from this movie is another fine performance by Blanchett.
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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