THE GUARD written and directed by John Michael McDonagh, with Brendan Gleeson, Don Cheadle, Liam Cunningham, Mark Strong and Fionnula Flanagan. An Alliance Films release. 96 minutes. Opens Friday (August 26). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NNNNN
John michael mcdonagh, writer and director of The Guard, is the brother of playwright-turned-filmmaker Martin McDonagh, writer and director of the 2008 art house hit In Bruges.
Both The Guard and In Bruges are darkly funny character studies involving tough guys, violence and Brendan Gleeson, so comparisons are inevitable. But The Guard is 10 times the movie In Bruges was.
Martin’s film was a showy but subpar Tarantino riff buoyed by Gleeson and Colin Farrell. The Guard is its own animal – equally showy, maybe, but smarter about its filmmaking and much, much smarter about its characters. And it’s hysterically funny – no mean feat for a movie about a cop on the trail of a drug-smuggling ring in rural Ireland.
The cop is Gerry Boyle (Gleeson), a small-town Garda sergeant with an ailing mother (Fionnula Flanagan), a new officer (Rory Keenan) and a compulsive need to fuck with anyone who crosses his path. This does not set him up well with FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle), recently arrived in nearby Galway, who’s hunting a trio of baddies planning to unload a small fortune in cocaine somewhere along the Irish coast.
Boyle is a wonderful character – a pragmatist who absolutely refuses to move, speak or think in a straight line when a cantilevered angle is available – and the role is perfectly tailored to Gleeson’s larger-than-life screen presence. He’s had great roles before – in Paddy Breathnach’s terrific, barely released I Went Down, in John Boorman’s The General and even in In Bruges – but this is his best, allowing him to be cuddly, cynical, gleeful, miserable and playful in the space of a single scene.
It’s a delight to watch Gleeson exchange flinty insults with Cheadle, another master of the underplayed reaction better still to watch the two actors slowly sync up as events draw their characters closer together and McDonagh shifts his easygoing movie into something approaching fourth gear.
The Guard is the finest, oddest buddy cop picture I’ve seen since Hot Fuzz, but it plays out in a very different, very specifically Irish way. And it’s one of the best movies I’ve seen this year.
normw@nowtoronto.com
