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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
pretty long (but coherent) rant., April 7, 2004
I just saw "Veronica Guerin" on DVD last week, and was blown away with it, and then horribly disappointed by the truly dismal reviews I found of it online. It bothered me immensely why the film sparked such a reaction. Eventually I had to sit down and try to figure out why this happened.These are the reasons I have come up with for the critical responses. 1. The jaded attitude of some critics. When "Whale Rider" came out last summer, many people applauded it for the fact that it touched even the most hardened and savvy viewers; but let's face it, a movie which stars an impressively gifted little girl and a bunch of whales will touch a person with much more ease than a movie about the drug trade. (And don't get me wrong, I adore "Whale Rider".) 2. I sense a certain amount of poorly-hidden discomfort in many reviews I've read. A sort of ... defensiveness. Partly for the above reason: jaded people don't like to be touched by things, but a movie like "Veronica Guerin" is, in my opinion, the kind of movie they most don't want to like. Not only does it take a moral attitude towards something, but it depicts the criminal world in a way which can easily be seen as cliche ... though I have to wonder .... how many of these critics actually know what the criminal world is like? All movies involve a certain amount of cliche, otherwise they wouldn't be movies. Fiction rests on cliche, even in the most sparing amounts, because it simply is not real. So yes: no doubt the way the world of the criminals in "Veronica Guerin" is depicted owes much to a certain amount of stylization, just as all aspects of every movie do. I suppose because it's a subject which is supposed to be so reliant on reality that some are so sensitive to it. But I think the high-handed tone of many critics on this subject is frankly a little laughable; as I said, how much do these people know about criminals? Not much, I doubt. It's harder to accept cliche on this subject than it is on others, I suppose. 3. And, as I said, the movie is very moralistic. Many people don't like to be told "This is wrong" (even if they agree that it probably is). In the climate which "Veronica Guerin" arrived in, I think people especially were sick to death of being told "This is wrong", for, er, obvious reasons of a political nature. 4. Two words: Joel Schumacher. The man everyone loves to hate. But let me tell you: if you listen to his commentary for the movie, there's no way to deny that he knew exactly what he was doing when he made this movie; he was immensely well-versed in the subject, and not only that, but formed a rare bond with Veronica's family which gives the film a genuiness which many biopic-themed films lack. Everytime I see a review in which the critic whines, "We don't get to meet Veronica in this film. We don't learn anything about her as a person," I think of how her family reacted to the movie and know that they certainly felt that the movie presented Veronica as a very real and psychologically complex person. I think of the really wonderful scene in the hospital after she's been shot in the leg and is clearly in shock and keeps trying to hide it (though of course, remember, Roger Ebert, in his ten minute long analysis of the picture, puts this performance down to Guerin's OBVIOUS out-of-control egotism). And I can only conclude that people went into the film disliking Joel Schumacher and not prepared to like the product no matter what. 5. And finally, there is a reason which has to do with Veronica's status as a journalist which I think plays a role in this. I detect a very important strain in this movie which most people hasn't seem to comment on. And that is that I feel there is a very strong indictment against the modern global media in here. I know that, watching the news this morning I felt a new sort of disgust for the whole way it was handled, in light of the film. Veronica Guerin was an exceptional journalist. Yes, she was a brave person, and that was part of it. Yes, she was sometimes foolish in her pursuit of a story (more on that later). She is, to put it simply, the type of journalist we should have more of. And which we most certainly don't. In the making of documentary on the DVD, one of Veronica's colleagues - the real person, not the actor who plays him in the movie - described her as NOT the kind of reporter who sat around in an office, waiting for a press release, waiting to be told a bunch of spin. And yeah, the immediate reaction to that is "No duh!" We certainly saw that in the movie. It was, in fact, pushed in our face. But when you really dwell on it, it's kind of depressing. Because how many other journalists can you say that about? I can only think of a few, and none of them are working now. Sitting around in an office waiting for a press release IS how most journalists operate. It's incredibly unmotivated and incredibly useless, really. I've followed threads in OIT where we were following a developing story and people posted link to article after article and was stunned by how every one sounded so much the same. Didn't matter what news agency. Didn't matter what COUNTRY. The media just seems to sit around, retyping what others have said. It's safe news reporting. There's a time and a place for this but there's a time and a place when someone actually has to get some balls and do something. We look at someone like Veronica Guerin and think "She was brave but she was stupid. WHY did she do this?" And I think this anger is understandable but totally misplaced. Don't be angry at Veronica. Be angry at the people who did it. Once again that sounds like an obvious conclusion, but look at the elements behind such a statement. The people who murdered her were, to put it mildly, out of control. They were so in love with themselves, with their petty wants and desires, with their extravagant way of living, that they felt that preserving these things was worth someone else's life. When they use this type of approach by killing people the slow way - i. e. by feeding addictions and taking advantage of people in poverty - no one's shocked. They don't approve of it but it's something that happens. When someone like Veronica is murdered, there's a different reaction. The selfishness of such an act is a bit more apparent. But there isn't any difference. That above reaction to her murder seems to have been the presiding feeling right after her death, the atmosphere that ushered in the creation of the CAB and the rewriting of the constitution. But the reaction which has greeted the film, which, from what I've read, appears to have begun to become prevalent years ago, possibly with the publication of Emily O'Neill's biography of Guerin, is different. There seems to be a blaming of Veronica. Sort of like "She asked for it." She should have known when to stop. She was careless for endangering herself and her family. She was too single-minded, she neglected her own safety and the people who loved her in the pursuit of this story. And you know what that reminds me of? It reminds of when comfortably elite people say of drug addicts who get murdered or die from their addictions, "They were stupid. They shouldn't have been involved. They asked for it." Anger that is misplaced. Anger that should be directed at the people doing the killing, the people who are taking advantage of others; anger that should be used in stopping these people. It's the same sort of misplacement which accompanies the reaction to Veronica and to the movie, though most people don't realize that there isn't a difference. We need people Veronica Guerin. People like her have kept the rest of us safe, or at least tried to, from the beginning of time. We can't understand how these people can do what they do, and maybe there's a little bit of resentment which arises from this fact. I don't know. I don't completely understand it myself. Guerin wasn't a saint. The movie doesn't depict her as such, which some reviewers seemed to have overlooked. But her faults don't lessen her achievments, and the mere fact that she was willing to go a distance which most of us can't imagine going doesn't make her stupid or insane. It doesn't make her perfect. It does make her someone worthy of respect, and I think the movie was also worthy of respect, a lot more than it got. And yeah, Cate Blanchett? Definitely screwed by Oscar.
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