OPENED AUGUST 1, CERT 18, 96 MINS There seemed to be a fascination with Dublin's criminal underworld during the 1990s?to date, two films have been made about the notorious Martin Cahill, aka The General, a peripheral character in this film. And this is the third movie to be inspired by the story of...
OPENED AUGUST 1, CERT 18, 96 MINS
There seemed to be a fascination with Dublin’s criminal underworld during the 1990s?to date, two films have been made about the notorious Martin Cahill, aka The General, a peripheral character in this film. And this is the third movie to be inspired by the story of crusading Irish journalist Veronica Guerin, after a made-for-TV drama and the worthy and best-forgotten Joan Allen vehicle When The Sky Falls. So despite being a superior film to most of the others (The General excepted), Joel Schumacher’s competent drama suffers from source material that’s been picked over too many times already. Cate Blanchett gives a strong lead performance although, to be fair, she has a better script to work with than Joan Allen did. The Guerin that we see in this version is a less varnished character?an absentee mother, a journalist with a half-baked grasp of grammar and a rash, foolhardy woman. And for this flawed complexity, she’s far more likeable than Allen’s saintly incarnation, and probably closer to the truth.