L'Irlandais

Something there is that is charming about films set in Ireland with Irish characters speaking in beautiful brogue and THE GUARD fits into that category very comfortably. Written and directed by John Michael McDonagh this is a funny, fast-paced film that manages to poke fun at many points of bigotry (anti-American, racism, the gay lifestyle, etc) in a manner that keeps the comedy rolling. In many ways the film is comparable to the film IN BRUGES, if that helps the reader to categorize in a positive way.

Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleason) is a small-town Irish cop in Western Ireland with a confrontational personality, a subversive sense of humor, a dying mother, a fondness for prostitutes, and absolutely no interest whatsoever in the international cocaine-smuggling ring that has brought straight-laced FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle, in a role that allows him to display his comedic gifts) to his door. Boyle's partner, a gay man Aidan McBride (Rory Keenan), the brunt of many of Boyle's jokes, is shot while making a traffic arrest by the drug smuggling gang (Mark Strong, Liam Cunningham, Owen Sharpe, Michael Og Lane) which leaves the cantankerous Boyle to align with the American black FBI agent Everett to solve the case. What begins as a fiction filled alignment ends up as a touching friendship.

McConagh's writing and direction are as fine as they come for films of this sort. It will be necessary for most viewers to turn on the subtitles to understand the brogue (the few Gaelic passages are not translated!). The cast, from the major roles to the minor ones (especially the extraordinarily beautiful Katarina Cas) including Laurence Kinlan and Fionnula Flanagan, is superb. This is a very fine comedy well worth the attention of a very wide audience!

Grady Harp

Greetings again from the darkness. Writer/Director John Michael McDonagh is the brother of Martin McDonagh, who brought us the excellent In Bruges (which also starred Brendan Gleeson). I figured it best to say that upfront because there is no way to avoid comparisons of the two films. Clearly these men grew up in the same house and were trained in a brilliant method of writing dialogue.

Brendan Gleeson delivers a powerful and hilarious performance as a local cop (Garda) in rural Ireland. His Sgt Gerry Boyle is quite an enigma - he gets along great with locals, yet struggles to fit into society. This is never more apparent than when FBI Agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) hits town on a drug smuggling investigation. The key to their relationship is crystallized at the moment an exasperated Agent Everett says to Boyle, 'I can't tell if you are really smart or really dumb'. Of course, I am paraphrasing because the F-word gets literally worn out in this movie. There aren't many lines I can actually quote in print. But the word rolls off Gleeson's tongue as if it's a work of art ... especially in conversation with his ailing mother, played well by the always terrific Fionnula Flanagan.

The international drug smugglers being chased are a trio led by Liam Cunningham and the always interesting Mark Strong. The endless rips, insults and jokes are fired rapidly at Americans, Brits and anyone unfortunate enough to hail from Dublin. Boyle uses his Irish background as a crutch for his racism and insensitivity. But he leaves no doubt about his expertise as a cop. Heck he even recognizes the importance of some 9 year old kid riding around on a pink bicycle. That's just another example of the off-center approach to story telling offered by McDonagh.

If you are a fan of In Bruges, Snatch, or Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, I think you will enjoy this one. It falls just short of that level, but not by much. Gleeson is outstanding and the story is simple enough, yet with plenty of twist, turns and hilarity.

Sergeant Gerry Boyle is a rather unconventional police officer – and perhaps not as effective as he could be. When the FBI trace major cocaine players to his district, Boyle is surprised to find that none of them are black or Mexican, but ends up assisting FBI agent Wendell Everett who, for his money, cannot work out if Boyle is really smart or really dumb.

The scenario with The Guard makes it sound like a standard fish out of water tale (with Everett being the fish) or another buddy-cop movie where two conflicting or bickering partners come together to solve the case. True, it has things in common with this genre in its dialogue and gun-fire, but this film is much more like someone took such a genre film and handed the script to the Cohen brothers and Graham Linehan to work on. The plotting is pretty straightforward here but it is the comedy that drives it. Those looking for the easy broad laughs suggested by the trailer might be disappointed because the film is funny because it has great characters and dialogue that is infuse with a wonderful Irish melancholy. Free of sentiment, the film is funnier for it because it is just so wonderfully odd.

The heart of the film is Brendan Gleeson and he owns it. He gets his character just right and has great comic timing and delivery, making the most of the dialogue which is wonderfully shocking and funny throughout. Writer and director McDonagh did an interview recently where he was acerbic and a little too honest about his feelings about his younger brother's success, and he uses this dark edge well in his writing, as well as mixing in visual and musical references to good effect; his script is as strong when it comes to one-liner jokes as it is in regards the brutal humour of his characters unsentimental realism. I'm not sure how they got Don Cheadle on board, but he is pretty good and to his credit the Hollywood star knows that he is supporting Gleeson, which he does. The supporting cast has Cunningham and Strong as philosophising drug dealers and they are as good as the entire supporting cast because the script is great for all the characters.

Overall, The Guard is a hard film to pigeonhole because while it is essentially a mismatched cop partner comedy, it is infused with a real oddness and dry Irish no-nonsense humour that works really well. Gleeson loves every minute of it and dominates the film while everyone wisely plays their part to support him in his lead role. McDonagh does a great job and The Guard will more than help him with his sibling rivalry.

Screenplay writer John Michael McDonagh's directorial debut, "The Guard" (2011) is really a fine movie, relying the least on the originality of its story, describing criminal proceedings of the group of cocaine drug-smugglers and their interaction with local police, set against the backdrop of small-town western Ireland, however, filled with crackling good dialogue, sparkling with wisecracks, accompanied with nice scenery and pleasant, unobtrusive music. But, what makes it the best is its protagonists' performances.

Brendan Gleeson is usually natural, making the character he plays fit like a glove—whether the robust and humorous loyal buddy and the warrior, as in "Braveheart" (1995), or a quiet and subdued aspiring politician, as in "Gangs of New York" (2002), or a non-supportive father, civil war volunteer-turned-deserter, as in "Cold Mountain" (2003), whether the gentle, mentoring, culture-exploring hit man in hiding, as in "In Bruges" (2008), or on the other side of the law, the grouchy police sergeant with defiant, often dissident sense of humour (provocative in one-liners like "being FBI, don't you prefer to fight unarmed women and children…"), as in this movie--and Don Cheadle, in the role of FBI agent Wendell Everett, a bit in the shade of Gleeson's Gerry Boyle, but nevertheless, sufficiently competitive ("Langley is CIA, I'm FBI…"), neat and convincing in his performance as always. (I admit to have a soft spot for this actor since his impressive role of the manager of Kigali Mille Collines hotel in the movie "Hotel Rwanda" (2004), the very same hotel I have been frequenting for two months in 1995, just a year later to tragic events described in the movie.)

To a pretty frequent movie goer like myself, who hasn't seen a single en par (or better?) leading actor in this year that is rapidly advancing towards its end, it is hard to believe that very many better acting performances could be demonstrated in the remaining two months or so. Therefore, if Brendan Gleeson does not find himself at least among top nominees for any yearly awarded film prize, I'll have a problem finding such decisions just.

As a marginal note, I was lucky to watch this movie back home in my motherland, because having it subtitled was very helpful in order not to miss any of sergeant Boyle's wisecracks, delivered often in heavy Irish accent, and to understand at all occasional lines, uttered by marginal characters, spoken completely in Gaelic. Of course, point was not to be understood by English native speakers, but it was still interesting to know what usual "advices" (if not insults) were given to English speakers, though eventually not English (as FBI agent!) at all. As Irish colleague of mine once said… "We don't sing songs in Gaelic so English people cannot understand how badly we talk about them, they know it already! We sing in Gaelic simply because that's our traditional language (N.B. official whatsoever), and songs sound much better and sweeter in it."

Michael McDonagh is the brother of one of the funniest writers in the world just now. Like him, he is a foul mouthed upstart with a unique ability to investigate Irishness with tremendous energy and vividness.

I was lucky enough to attend the premiere in Edinburgh this week and enjoyed what is another great addition to the McDonagh canon of work.

Inevitably it has to be compared to the superior In Bruges but this is no lightweight cast off. Particularly when it one again focuses on a heavyweight performance by Irish heavyweight, Brendan Gleeson. In "In Bruges" Gleeson had to battle for compliments against Colin Farrell who has never performed better and had most of the best lines. Not here. This is all Gleeson, ably abetted by Don Cheadle as the Black FBI agent drafted in on the back of a glittering career to track down a bunch of slightly bungling drug runners in sleepy old Conemarra - Gleeson's patch.

Gleeson and Cheadle spar well and develop a likable relationship, despite this it's not the heart of the movie; that belongs, again, to Gleeson in a tour de force performance.

Cheadle's good and is a great foil. The baddies are less well developed characters and, for my taste, were slightly too caricaturised.

It's not a life changing film but it has to be seen for Gleeson's complete mastery of McDonagh's marvellous script.