LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Veronica Guerin: Joel Schumacher
built 286 days ago
Veronica Guerin was a remarkable woman. This film version of the last few dramatic years of her life does a good job of showing that. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer (The Rock, Armageddon, Gone in 60 Seconds) and director Joel Schumacher (St. Elmo's Fire, Batman Forever, Phone Booth), tell a restrained story, almost completely free of melo-drama, that details the events that led to the murder of Veronica Guerin; a reporter for Ireland's 'The Sunday Independent' in 1996.
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"Veronica Guerin" is by the numbers as it depicts the near saint-like title character going through her day-to-day grind for truth, justice and the Irish way. The screenplay by Carol Doyle and Mary Agnes Donohue (from Doyle's story) takes a typical show-the-tragic-ending then build the story to that end, a la "Silkwood." It is a sound way to tell a tale and Schumacher does a yeoman's job doing so.
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Veronica Guerin ... avoids the Erin Brockovich syndrome, in that it refuses to install a halo, even a flawed one, around Guerin’s head. She’s neglectful of her family, not above flirting with a source, and likely never listened to a single word of advice in her life (yet you’d give up your life story if she sat down and had a drink with you). Also unlike your average Brockovich-style message movie, Veronica Guerin moves like a bullet, clocking in at a lean 98 minutes. There are many more alleys that the film could have gone down, but that would just have given director Joel Schumacher more chances to screw up (this is the man who brought us Bad Company, after all); as it stands, Schumacher gives the film a hard-charging grace, helped considerably by a passionate script and Brendan Galvin’s sharp, wintry camerawork. There are a few weak moments where a little more exposition would have given the story more weight, and by the soundtrack-heavy conclusion, many viewers will be suffering from soaring Celtic vocals overload.
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Veronica Guerin, as the movie vividly portrays... was intimidated, threatened with death, and physically assaulted by the people she wrote about. Her 5-year-old son was threatened, too. Particularly chilling is her brutal beating by a crazed drug lord who pummels and kicks her in the front yard of his sprawling country estate. Schumacher gives moviegoers a close up of Guerin as she drives from the scene, her face and hands bloodied. She appears as stunned by what just happened as moviegoers. Her face does not show the resolve of a hardened movie hero plotting revenge on her attacker.
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Next is the circa 12-minute "Public Mask, Private Fears" making-of featurette that focuses on the real Veronica Guerin and how the film tells her story. Various on-set footage appears over interviews with the principals actors, director Schumacher, and producer Jerry Bruckheimer. The featurette discusses Guerin more than showing the making of the film, and in that regard it's a little disappointing, yet the comments from the interviews are honest.
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''Veronica Guerin'' hardly trusts you to follow its story, opening with the murder, then a series of titles that explain what's to follow. And whose idea was it to use a score jarringly reminiscent of the stuff in Steven Segal's movies or to have Schumacher's buddy Colin Farrell show up for a single inexplicable scene?
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Joel Schumacher