In the qoit town of Connemara there was a mordor – a murder to you and me. The local policeman Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) is so excited at the prospect of investigating a real honest to goodness crime that he almost has a facial expression.
Almost.
But The Guard isn’t a film about car chases, CSI forensics and sexy action, it is a character study akin to The Matador or In Bruges – which I hasten to add Gleeson also starred in – and if you pay attention The Guard might just end up inadvertently entertaining you.
Shortly after the dead body shows up so too does FBI Agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle). Everett informs the local force that a major drug buy is imminent in the area and identifies 4 suspects most likely responsible for the crime.
One of them is Boyle’s murder victim.
Talk about making the day off count…
Boyle and Everett have far more than a disparate ethnic and cultural background separating them, while Everett is the epitome of tact, professionalism and integrity Boyle is crass, boorish and anti-PC in ways Bad Teacher could only dream of.
At one stage he takes a day off from the investigation – because it was booked before the murder – to indulge himself with a couple of local prostitutes for the day.
But the pursuit of the bad guys is only part of the charm of the film, in any case the three remaining suspects are hardly laying low, they manage to kill a rookie cop and make no secret of the fact that ‘something’ is going on, paying off all the local police to look the other way. All that is, except Boyle (too stubborn and unpredictable) and Everett (too American)…
The Guard doesn’t pretend it is a top of the line anything. To use a vehicular analogy it knows it isn’t a Mercedez Benz or Porsche, but it relishes being a reliable base model car with all the extras. Like the two films mentioned earlier it is likely that in months to come I won’t remember much of this film aside from ‘it was good’, but if I should be lucky enough to choose to revisit it I will be pleasantly surprised.
Final Rating – 7 / 10. The Guard takes a few serious events and peppers them with clever, witty dialogue and well drawn characters. It might prove hard to remember, but that doesn’t mean it’s that hard to enjoy.
