In Veronica Guerin the tendency of Hollywood to distort the facts of the bitter sweet adventure of an Irish journalist is all too easy to do. But director Jerry Bruckheimer changed very little about the life of Veronica Guerin and her desire to expose the Irish drug trade. Whether or not her motives were of good intentions or just to keep from getting fired is beyond the point and dwelling on it brings nothing but speculation. What matters most is historical accuracy and the truth.
In the movie some things were changed simply because it was believed that the public would not believe that it actually occurred.
Movie: Martin Cahill was shown as having been tortured and his legs skinned and later died of his injuries.
Reality: Martin Cahill was tortured and his legs were skinned. He later died of his injuries.
Movie: Veronica is shown reading to her son before bed. Shortly after she leaves the room a shot is fired through the window.
Reality: Two shots were fired into the room of her son after she tucks him in for the night.
Movie: After Veronica is shot in the leg, she is shown at home preparing to deliver letters to various men asking if they were responsible for her being shot.
Reality: The truth of this is that she immediately left the hospital to deliver the letters.
Movie: Veronica Guerin snuck onto John Gilligan’s property, shown with stone walling and a private drive, and confronted him on his door step. He assaulted her, while calling her a cunt.
Reality: Gilligan’s estate was surrounded by electric security fences and when he assaulted Veronica she was pushed over the hood of the car. While beating her, he repeated over and over again that if she wrote about him he would kill her.
Movie: After her vicious beating at the hands of John Gilligan, Veronica is in bed resting when she receives a phone call from him. He threatens her saying, ''If you write a word about me, I will find your boy and kidnap and ride him. I am going to shoot you, do you understand what I am saying to you? I am going to kill you. I am going to fuckin’ kill you.''
Reality: Veronica is at work when she receives this phone call on her cellular phone. It is at this point she decides to press charges against John Gilligan for the assault.
Movie: When Veronica is in her car, she is shot five times while she is on her cellular phone leaving a message for her police officer friend.
Reality: Veronica was on the phone leaving a message for her police officer friend on his answering machine. She said, “‘Ha, ha, ha. You didn't get me,’ the tape records her laughing. Then there is the sound of three shots. Then two more. Then silence.”
Movie: The men who assassinated Veronica Guerin dispose of the bike and the gun.
Reality: The driver, Brian Meehan, and the shooter (possibly state witness Russel Warren?) did not dispose of the bike and gun. A third man named, Paul Ward, provided and disposed of the bike and gun.
Movie: At the end it shows the arrests of John Gilligan and the men he had ordered to kill Veronica, as well as the seizure of his estate and property.
Reality: No arrests were made in the murder of Veronica Guerin; all involved were arrested on various charges, none of them being her murderer. The seizure of the Gilligan estate was continuously challenged by John Gilligan’s wife Geraldine up until 2008, twelve years after the death of Veronica Guerin.
Truth vs. Truthiness
Truth vs. Truthiness
It’s sometimes hard to tell what is truth and what is truthiness, especially in regards to this movie.
After the movie came out, some people said that Veronica was a bad mother, while others said that she was both a good mother and journalist.
Kelly Fincham worked with Veronica and said about her, “Like all mothers, she worried about her child’s future but she also worried that her son would grow up in a crime-infested city, as the authorities appeared to be ignoring the drug epidemic.”
Two other aspects of Veronica’s life that many people questioned after her death were her loyalty and seemingly lack of care towards protecting her family and whether her constant seeking of drug stories was due to her desire to become famous or be seen as a hero. Fincham also commented on these ideas.
“Knowing now what we didn’t know then, I don’t believe she would have continued writing such stories if she had thought the threat to her life was so grave," Fincham said. "She wasn’t some reckless reporter out to make a name for herself as the great drug crusader. She was a woman who couldn’t understand why more people weren’t taking on the drug baron."
Fincham’s Article http://www.irishabroad.com/news/irishinamerica/news/guerin.asp
Overall the movie framed Veronica in the way Fincham saw her- as a caring, loving mother and wife who felt an urgent desire to unearth the secrets of the drug world and expose the drug barons who were running Dublin.
There was one scene in the movie that showed Veronica being unsure of what birthday present she had supposedly bought for her son, which led the audience to question her as a mother. This scene had many people in Ireland in an uproar because of their strong view of Veronica as a type of hero.
Many of the scenes and details in the movie were true:
- the location that is shown at the beginning of the movie, which was the north side of Dublin. This is also the area where Veronica Guerin worked.
- the needles in the streets and young children playing with them. Filmmakers used actual photos from that time period and place to create this scene.
- the car that Veronica drives in the movie is the actual car that she drove in real life. It was a red Opel Calibra.
- drug barons nailed a traitor to the floor and shaved the skin off his legs.
- Molly, the girl that was with John Traynor, told Veronica that Traynor was the one who sent the man who shot her. Molly also told Veronica that the man was supposed to kill her. (The reason he didn’t was because the guns they used were old and they didn’t work well.)
- John Traynor called John Gilligan and told him where Veronica would be the next day in order to protect himself.
- Drug barons watched Veronica leave the Naas courthouse where she had been fighting to keep her driver’s license after getting another speeding ticket. She did call a few people on the drive and was happy about being able to keep her license. She was on the phone with the policeman when the drug barons shot her at the stoplight and he heard the shots. (The drug barons had gotten the guns from a Jewish cemetery, which is where they usually kept them hidden.) After killing Veronica, they threw the gun and motorcycle into the canal.
Some scenes in the movie had a basis of truth to them, but the filmmakers then added aspects of truthiness:
- Veronica did write letters to the drug barons that said “Were you responsible for shooting me?” However, Veronica’s husband actually picked her up from the hospital, not from her house. Then they dropped off the letters. Veronica also did publicly tell the drug barons that she was not afraid. The reason that the filmmakers added this truthiness to the scene is because they thought that the audience wouldn’t believe it if they showed the reality of it being in the hospital.
- When Veronica went to John Gilligan’s house, she did not ask him a question. She did inform him of who she was and who she worked for. Gilligan then starting beating her. Gilligan called Veronica and told her that he would kidnap and rape her son, and kill her. But, unlike in the movie Gilligan called her when she was at work, not at home. This is what made her decide to press charges against him, in order to protect her son.
- Veronica actually met John Traynor in a restaurant, rather than on a beach as the movie shows. She was wearing a wire, so the dialogue in the movie is accurate.
http://is.muni.cz/th/160333/pedf_b/The_Power_of_Female_Character.txt
