Veronica Effect

I usually am not one to watch historical films, but I will if it’s recent history and if an actor or actress I know plays a good part. So it was with Bobby,( who could turn down an all star cast?) And Nicolas Cage in World Trade Center.

Truth be told, I’m quicker to follow foreign history if they can make it look like an art film. But when I saw the producer was Jerry Bruckheimer, I had to see Veronica Guerin. If you’re like me, you never heard of her. Usually our national new doesn’t cover domestic issues in other countries, like the escalating drug issues of Dublin, Ireland in the early 90’s.
But if you lived in Ireland then, you’d darn sure know that Veronica Guerin was a wife and mother and a journalist. She grew concerned when she saw children playing with hypodermic needles that littered the streets, that the people buying drugs were so young. she believed the drug pushers needed to be stopped and started writing about it.
She was threatened repeatedly, beaten and shot at. To Veronica, this meant she was on the right track. When family tried to reason with her and cajole her toward safer writing options, she was undeterred but said, “I don’t want to do it, I have to do it.”

Bruckheimer portrayed an uphill battle and even men afraid to confront drug criminals. Even though she continued to write the articles, in the end, it cost her her life.
I wondered, can one person make a difference? But she did. The parliament changed laws the no longer protected the property or incomes of suspected drug dealers. Dublin took up the battle against drug dealers and after a year had passed, a once escalating crime wave dropped 15%.
I highly recommend seeing this movie, out on DVD, in which Cate Blanchette plays Veronica Guerin.