by JOANNE LATIMER

While shopping on Sherbrooke Street this summer, Cate Blanchett bought a pair of pricey boots and reportedly told the shop clerk she didn't like the script for Veronica Guerin, her latest film. It's a startling confession about a film that could earn Blanchett some hardware at the next round of award shows.

Despite the lead actress's disclaimer, Veronica Guerin is a prickly thriller about a real-life journalist poking her nose into Dublin's drug trade in the '90s. At the top of the heap was Martin Cahill, known as The General; John Boorman gave Cahill a loving tribute in his '98 black and white film The General, then Thaddeus O'Sullivan did the same in Ordinary Decent Criminals, which starred Kevin Spacey. In Veronica Guerin, however, director Joel Schumacher steered clear of portraying Cahill as a cheeky imp and wisely made him a nameless creep. That was a relief. I'd reached my threshold for cinematic hero worship of a man who turned entire neighbourhoods of Dublin kids into junkies.

Schumacher sets the record straight about Cahill in one of the opening scenes. Cahill's thugs cut the legs off a guy for some breach of drug-related protocol. The howling is heard all over the tenement block. That settled, Schumacher unleashes Guerin on the case. She's bored at the Sunday Independent and becomes a self-styled crime reporter. She drives like a maniac-which is supposed to tell us that she's a rebel-and gets really chummy with the cops. Her husband, young son and a wise old mother (Brenda Fricker) tolerate her fearless reporting until the threats start hitting home. Guerin's locked in a spectacular pissing contest with Cahill and gangster John Gilligan (Gerald McSorley), and seeing as this is based on a high-profile true story, we all know how it ends.

This kind of movie can be a bore-waiting for someone to get offed. But Schumacher builds the tension in a slow and credible manner, making us squirm and fear the bad guys. Blanchett does Guerin proud, but the ghost that haunts is McSorley, whose character gives Guerin a shit-kicking while calmly spitting out the word "cunt" nine times. Much of the time, far bloodier and more violent films do not manage to be so deeply affecting.

Veronica Guerin opens Friday, Oct. 17

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