Drama over documentary

`I'm a great believer in the idea that you can tell the truth in dramas far better than you can in documentaries," says director John MacKenzie. "I don't believe half the documentaries I see. But you can get the essence of the truth in fiction, and I wanted to get the essence of this story. My impression of what it was like."

MacKenzie's new film, When the Sky Falls - a thinly fictionalised account of the events leading up to the death of journalist Veronica Guerin - is the fourth drama in the last two years to be based on - or, as in this case, "inspired by" - true events in Dublin's criminal underworld which culminated in murder. It's a remarkable mini-phenomenon in its own right, the director agrees.

"I was amazed about this General thing, because all that Ireland seemed to have was stories about Martin Cahill. I just don't understand it. Mind you, he was a very interesting character, and very different. So I could see that, but to keep repeating it is very strange. I'd seen The General, I'd heard about the others, and I'd read some of the scripts, so I was wondering how many of these were around . . . He was even in this script for a short time as well!"

In fact, there is still a character, played by Pete Postlethwaite, who bears some resemblance to Cahill, but MacKenzie insists that "he's a different kind of character and he gets killed a different way. I wanted Cahill out of it, so it wouldn't look as if the whole of Irish film was based on him."

MacKenzie is in a good position to comment on trends and fads in the world of crime movies. His London thriller, The Long Good Friday, has grown in stature since its original release in 1979, so that it is regularly hailed as "the best British thriller ever made".

One of the things that attracted him to When the Sky Falls, he says, was the idea of putting the new Dublin on screen. "I knew Dublin, but I hadn't been there for three or four years, so when I came over to discuss doing the film, I was amazed at what I saw, and the huge move forward.

"In a way it reminded me of The Long Good Friday, because the London of the 1980s was a bit like that, a city on the rise, affluent, looking good, and along with that comes all this crime, which always seems to happen. So that was what attracted me, because I didn't think it had been seen in films before. They all look a bit black and white to me, with cobble-stoned streets and horses pulling Guinness carts."

Along with his cinematographer, Seamus Deasy, MacKenzie definitely succeeds in getting that new Dublin on-screen, along with the seamier side of the city. It's one of the strange paradoxes of thrillers, he agrees, that they play on the ambiguity between celebrating the city and showing it as a place of perdition and lost souls. Things become slightly more difficult, though, when your story is based on real people and real suffering.

"The one thing I would have liked to have shown was a bit more of the fun," reflects MacKenzie. "But it's quite difficult, because I'm dealing with a story which, although it's a fiction or a faction, is based on this woman's life. So there are certain limitations. Not as much as if it had been a biopic, where I really wouldn't have been able to touch on the areas I wanted to."

There must also have been serious legal concerns on the part of the production, I suggest, about depicting events, some of which are still the subject of investigations and court proceedings. "That was a concern," he admits. "Especially since some of those people are on the loose or haven't been tried yet. It seemed like a simple solution to change the names, which I wanted to do anyway. It gave me a feeling of freedom. I wanted it to be truthful, without being factually, boringly, ploddingly doing the same old thing."

One of the most striking elements of When the Sky Falls is that, unlike some other recent Irish crime films, there's nothing cuddly about the bad guys here. Mannix Flynn, in particular, makes a truly scarifying mob leader and Jimmy Smallhorne a believably slimy sidekick.

"Finding these people was really fun," says MacKenzie. "I keep going back to The Long Good Friday, but it was the same then. I was very careful not to get cod villains who spoke out of the side of their mouths. Mannix was great. When I offered the role to him, quivers went around the production office. But I just knew that this guy would do it, and he did." The production company also worried about the casting of Jimmy Smallhorne because he was not well-known. "But who cares? He's exciting, new, and fresh - he was always going to be great on the screen."

When MacKenzie came on board, the producers had already cast Joan Allen to play the central role. "I didn't object to that at all," he says. "She's a wonderful actress and she added a whole lot to the film." They both worked together on creating `Sunday Globe journalist Sinead Hamilton'.

"As in all good characters, there are ambiguities and contradictions," says MacKenzie. "That's what gives it depth. It seems to me that, in her job, her outstanding characteristic was an incredibly gutsy determination and ambition to be noticed. At the same time, there's the relationship with her husband (Kevin McNall) and child (Fearghal Geraghty). I didn't know much about that, but I thought I could feel what it would be like.

"In the script, there was hardly anything about her home life, but I felt I couldn't do a story like this without doing something about the husband. Who is he? Is he a cipher? Do they argue? In a sense, that is an invention, because nobody knows what happens between a husband and wife when they're at home together. From what I picked up from various people about that relationship, it seemed necessary to be inventive, and to come up with a viable answer."

He also felt it necessary to bring some more light and shade to the character. "In the initial script, she was a crusading white knight, and I thought there had to be more to it than that, or else it's rather boring. I wanted to make a rounded character I could believe in, and ultimately I think she's a terrific character. Of course there are drawbacks, even in her style of journalism. There's the whole question of the power of the press and what direction it's going in. As one character in the film rightly says, she's condemning people without trial. On the other hand, I couldn't help sympathising with what she was doing, because it was in such a good cause. What other way could you have done it?"

He had read Emily O'Reilly's book about Guerin before starting production. "That was largely an attack on the newspaper, and again there's an ambiguity in the film about that."

Joan Allen, MacKenzie says, wanted the character to be tough. "Which is what she was. She had that incredible confidence, where you don't believe anything's going to happen to you. It may have been ill-judged, but in a way I'm a bit like that as well. I don't believe anything's going to happen to me, so I tend to step in where angels fear to tread."

And would those questions about Guerin's alleged recklessness or her family have been asked if she wasn't a woman? "Exactly, those questions wouldn't be put. I liked that. This was the first film I've been able to do for years with a woman in the lead - and deal with all that stuff about women and their place in the world and work. That was one of the things that surprised me about Ireland as well. The women have changed. The Scots are matriarchal, but they're not so out there and in your face as Irish women. I found that refreshing, and I wanted to put it on screen."

When the Sky Falls opens on June 16th