Veronica Guerin is a 2003 biographical crime film directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Cate Blanchett in the title role. The screenplay by Carol Doyle and Mary Agnes Donoghue focuses on Irish journalist Veronica Guerin, whose investigation into the drug trade in Dublin led to her murder in 1996, at the age of 37. The film is the second to be inspired by Guerin's life. Three years earlier, When the Sky Falls centred on the same story, although the names of the real-life characters were changed. Plot Veronica Guerin, a crime reporter for the Sunday Independent, becomes aware of how much Dublin's illegal drug trade is encroaching upon the lives of its working class, especially the children, and vows to expose the men responsible. Guerin begins by interviewing the pre-pubescent addicts who shoot up on the street or in abandoned buildings in the housing estates. Her investigation leads her to major suppliers and John Traynor, a notable source of information about the criminal underworld. Traynor is willing to assist her to an extent but is not above misleading her in order to protect himself from nefarious drug lord John Gilligan. To steer her away from Gilligan, Traynor suggests Gerry Hutch, a criminal known as The Monk, is in charge of the operation. Guerin pursues Hutch and discovers he is not involved. As Guerin nears the truth, she and her family become targets. A bullet fired through a window in her home as a warning fails to stop her. She is then shot in the leg, and her young son Cathal is threatened. Her husband Graham, mother Bernie, and brother Jimmy implore her to stop, but when Guerin confronts Gilligan at his home and is savagely beaten, she becomes more determined to expose him. Rather than press charges, which would necessitate her removal from the story, she forges ahead with the investigation. On 26 June 1996, Guerin appears in court to respond to parking tickets and speeding penalties that she had ignored. She is given a nominal fine of IR£100. En route home she calls her mother and then her husband to report the good news. She is speaking to her office while stopped at traffic light on the Naas Dual Carriageway when two men riding a motorcycle pull up beside her. The driver breaks the window of her car and shoots her six times. The two flee and dispose of