ThiefHott Too much of everything

AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Unlimitedia Sick Product of a Sick System

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

pyrocitor There's a great gag at the end of The Guard that stops just shy of the line of excessively meta, in which the resident cheeky photography (Laurence Kinlan) quips that the ensuing carnage would normally be a flashy bloodbath told from the perspective of the FBI or CIA, with all of the simple Irish country folk marginalized as one-note background players. Our resident FBI narc (Don Cheadle, still best in the business at sardonic comebacks), is not amused, but it's here that the ultimate objective of John Michael McDonagh's cop (or, as the Gaelic would have it, 'Garda,' hence the title) comedy pokes out through the Burren. The Guard's intent is not to reinvent the wheel, but merely to give it a spin, seeing how the stereotypically North American genre plays out in the beautiful Galway countryside. And how does it play out? Really fook*n' well, to be sure.McDonagh, in case you were wondering, is the brother of In Bruges director Martin McDonagh, and there's no contesting that the two are cut very much from the same craic. The Guard's script, which offers just whiffs of early Tarantino, Shane Black, and even Truffaut, is Irish through-and-through, in that it plays for sly and witty more than laugh-out-loud funny, with no distracting stylistic flourishes or other such nonsense. McDonagh isn't much fussed by plot, and he certainly isn't in a hurry, allowing his film to shamble along, drinking in character beats and collecting amusing subplots along the way (see Brendan Gleeson's nonconformist cop Boyle take his mother – the delightfully twee but profane Fionnula Flanagan - to the pub, fence firearms to the IRA – here represented by Pat Shortt's amiable cowboy, and take a day off work to cavort with a pair of the cheeriest prostitutes in cinema history). Audiences unaccustomed to this more leisurely pace might find The Guard to drag and feel overlong, even at only 96 minutes, but there are so many sparkles of enjoyment throughout that it's hard not to get comfortable and enjoy the stupendous Galway scenery along the way.The most gleeful: the inevitable ending dockside shootout. You know you're not in Hollywood territory when the introduction of an AK-47 is greeted with bug-eyed scorn ("what're you doing bringing that cannon here?!"), and the entirety of the subsequent showdown, while still exhilarating, still manages to be the most grounded and reasonable take on what would be overblown intensified continuity elsewhere. Boyle and his drug-smuggling foes (top character actors Liam Cunningham, Mark Strong, and David Wilmot, all in hilariously eloquent and introspective form) stop not once but twice to have a pleasant chat in the midst of a firefight, and Strong even goes as far as to murmur "good shot…" in his dying breath. You practically await rapiers to be drawn.Ultimately, The Guard is worth its weight in Guinness if only as a rare but welcome starring vehicle for the peerlessly delightful Gleeson. His craggy face illuminating with the irreverent sparkle of jauntily letting rip with some of the most jaw-dropping politically incorrect slurs (Boyle is evidently not racist, but seems to enjoy playing the part to rile people up) or cheerily skimming drugs off dead bodies, before sliding into more sombre, tender emotional moments, revealing it all to be a defensive mechanism, Gleeson effortlessly plays his tricky character like a finely tuned fiddle. Whether hilariously sparring with Cheadle's beleaguered agent, or misting with sadness while mocking tottering retirees with his mum, Gleeson is simply a joy to watch from start to finish.The Guard is neither the most original nor memorable of buddy-cop romps, but McDonagh's film, in reworking the iconography while toying with pleasantly offensive Irish pastiche, is so hugely fun it's hard to resist. Throw in the never-better Gleeson and Cheadle as perfectly witty sparring partners, and you're in for a relatively peaceful, rollicking good time. All the while, you can mull over Cheadle's query – "I can't tell if you're really motherf*cking smart or really motherf*cking dumb". Gleeson's sly smile provides all the answer you need. -8/10

Jackson Booth-Millard I had seen the poster and DVD cover for this British film many times, so I knew the leading Irish actor of the title, it had positive reviews by critics also, so I looked forward to trying it for myself. Basically Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Golden Globe nominated Brendan Gleeson) is an eccentric and unorthodox Irish police officer working for the Garda Síochána in a small town in Connemara, in the west of Ireland, confrontational personality, a subversive sense of humour, and a regular indulgence in prostitutes, drugs and alcohol, whilst on duty, but he does have a soft side as well, his mother Eileen (The Others' Fionnula Flanagan) is dying. Boyle has absolutely no interest in the international cocaine-smuggling and trafficking ring whatsoever, but that is what has brought American straitlaced and humourless FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) to Ireland, he is leading an investigation to catch a gang of dangerous drug traffickers attempting to pull of a high profit deal. This turns into a fish-out-of-water partnership between Boyle and Everett, due to a fellow officer of Boyle's disappearing, they team up to catch these criminals, with different approaches to getting the job done, Boyle is a maverick with no moral code, while Everett is more professional. Also starring Liam Cunningham as Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, David Wilmot as Liam O'Leary, Rory Keenan as Aidan McBride, Mark Strong as Clive Cornell, Dominique McElligott as Aoife O'Carroll, Sarah Greene as Sinead Mulligan and Katarina Cas as Gabriela McBride. Gleeson excels as the foul-mouthed anti-hero, Cheadle does well as the on-point FBI agent disrupting the easy life of the title character, this is essentially an alternative cop-buddy movie, it is definitely all about Gleeson's character, a dreadful policeman slowly showing deeper humanity, the investigation and action sequences are worthwhile as well, all in all it is a gritty and amusing comedy thriller. It was nominated the BAFTA for Best Original Screenplay. Very good!

Robert D. Ruplenas This is an offbeat and quirky film but I found it strangely engaging. Gleeson's Boyle is not exactly an anti-hero, but his offensive and confrontational personality only narrowly outweigh his basic honesty and devotion to duty. The script is highly intelligent (drug dealers trading quotes from Neitzsche?) with heavy doses of very dry wit. The odd couple pairing of Boyle with Don Cheadle's FBI agent Wendell Everett is very entertaining. The whole tone of the movie keeps throwing you slightly off kilter, but never enough to be offputting. I would maintain, despite what some viewers have said here, that the Irish accents are indeed difficult; I had to use my closed captioning. My only other criticism is that the movie's aspiration to be a dark comedy is undercut by Boyle's death at the end.

David Love Directed and written by John Michael McDonagh, The Guard features unorthodox Irish small-town police Sergeant Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) doing battle with a learned crew of drug-runners with the help of bemused FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle).It takes a bit of concentration on the accents if you're not from the west of Ireland and the humour is a bit blunt at times. But as long as you don't take offence should you happen to be black, gay, American, English or from Dublin, you should enjoy this. You'll also need to be OK with a lot, and I mean a lot, of swearing, and a moderate number of shootings.I laughed out loud a few times particularly when Boyle says to Wendell 'these men are armed and dangerous, and you being an FBI agent you're more used to shooting at unarmed women and children'... Also, when Boyle suggests Wendell 'probably hadn't had this much fun since they burned all those kids up in Waco'.