Dir. John Michael McDonagh, Ireland, 2011, 96 mins
Cast: Brendan Gleeson, Don Cheadle, Mark Strong
Review by Carol Allen
The Guard sounds like an attractive proposition for a start because of the names McDonagh and Gleeson being attached. Gleeson gave a terrific performance in Martin McDonagh’s wickedly brilliant movie In Bruges, and the writer/director of this movie is John Michael McDonagh, who is Martin’s older brother. The additional fact that Martin is credited as executive producer on this leads one to hope that means that he is supporting his older brother because the talent runs in the family. Unfortunately the film doesn’t quite live up to those high expectations but it is still not without merit.
The concept is a good one. Gleeson plays Boyle, the Guard or Irish policeman of the title. He’s a small town cop with a subversive and independent attitude to authority and a wicked sense of humour. The opening of the film establishes the character very well in the equally cool and laconic way he handles both a handful of speed limit breaking teenagers and then the discovery of the dead body of man, who has been shot.
The centre of the story is the “unlikely buddy” relationship between Boyle and Cheadle, as Wendell Everett, an uptight FBI agent who has been sent from America to investigate an international cocaine smuggling ring. It is a relationship which is certainly not made in heaven, as Boyle has no interest in such matters and resents having his peculiar lifestyle disturbed.
There are some very good lines in the movie and some nice plot twists, as when the truth is revealed about Boyle’s young and enthusiastic assistant copper – nice performance by Rory Keenan. There are also some original, outrageous and potentially darkly hilarious situations, which do indeed echo McDonagh the younger’s work. Some delicious ingredients indeed but the dish doesn’t cook quite as well as it should. The humour and language lack the anarchic and colourful appeal of McDonagh the younger’s writing and the film never seems to settle down into a unified piece.
The director has though gathered a first class cast. Gleeson nails his character perfectly, there’s a great performance from Fionnula Flanagan as his mother, who allows neither age nor the approach of death to temper her lusty attitude, thus marking her out as the unmistakable old block from which Boyle is a chip, and Mark Strong wrings every ounce of humour in terms of his delivery and characterization from his role as a member of the drugs gang. However the central relationship between Boyle and Wendell only occasionally seems to take flight. Cheadle is a fine actor, but in this film he never quite seems to get to grips with the role he is playing. He looks, perhaps justifiably in view of the totally alien environment in which he is operating, totally bewildered by the whole thing a lot of the time.
There’s a really good, original film in here trying to get out but it only succeeds in doing so in fits and starts.
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