The Guard (2011)
By Roxanne Downer
The Guard, starring In Bruges’s Brendan Gleeson, is a quirky blend of Irish comedy and crime thriller. With a brogue as thick as the mist of May, Gleeson plays an unconventional policeman named Gerry Boyle in Western Ireland’s County Galway. And by unconventional, I mean potty-mouthed, slightly racist, and heavily revisionist of the crime code. When he’s not hiring prostitutes to play dress up or dropping acid filched from the pockets of car-crash victims, Boyle gets caught up in the investigation of a series of murders committed by a new-to-town drug smuggling ring.
There to help him in his investigation are fish-out-water American FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) and a newbie Garda—that’s Gaelic for “guard”—named Aidan Mcbride (Rory Keenan). When the first murder is uncovered with the number “5 ½” scrawled in blood on the wall, McBride is convinced that it is part of an occult serial murder spree, with movies from David Fincher’s Seven to Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 as his proof. But Everett explains that the real culprits’ motives involve trafficking $500 million (or maybe it’s a half-billion; it’s one of the film’s running jokes) worth of cocaine. Falstaffian Boyle and straitlaced Everett couldn’t have less in common but—in true buddy-cop fashion—they must meld their styles to solve the crime when naïve McBride ends up in trouble.
Don’t be fooled, though. The Guard is not really a whodunit. It’s revealed pretty early on that the criminals in question include mastermind Francis Sheehy (Liam Cunningham), a twitchy, comic sociopath named Liam O’Leary (David Wilmot), and a too-sensible English henchman called Clive Cornell (Mark Strong). Together with our trio of good guys, these make up six of the most idiosyncratic on-screen characters this summer. They’re all tropes, of course, but played by actors strong enough to make them genuinely interesting. If you don’t believe me, watch as Strong fustily refuses to muss his pants while disposing of a body or Wilmot’s buggy blue eyes dart around a room after he’s shot. That’s not to mention Gleeson’s warm, winning chemistry with Fionnula Flannigan, who plays his ailing mother.
This fine comic acting is buttressed by John Michael McDonagh’s strong writing and directing. He manages to string together so many heavily accented cuss words, the script starts to sound like poetry. It must be a family trait: this McDonagh is the brother of In Bruges’ helmer Martin McDonagh. As director, he also offers some visually interesting vistas of the Irish countryside (fog, anyone?). Along with the interior of Boyle’s bright, viridian-colored apartment and some wacky floral shirts, silk smoking jackets, and velvet blazers, it shows a wonderful, easy playfulness that makes The Guard tick.
My only complaint is that my untrained American ears could have used a subtitle or two to decipher some of the soupy Gaelic wordplay. I’m sure I missed a good number of jokes at the expense of the English, the Welsh, Dubliners, and the good old U.S. of A. Every line of what I could make out in The Guard, though, was as good as Guinness.
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This The Guard movie review is copyright 2009 Small World Marketing and Shane Rivers. This The Guard review should not be reprinted without the permission of the copyright holders.
This movie review of The Guard expresses the opinion of the author only. Other The Guard movie reviews are available online, and some of those might or might not express different opinions on the movie. Like those other The Guard movie reivews, this The Guard review is intended for the entertainment and education of the reader. This The Guard movie review is provided as is with no warranty or guarantee implied.
