The Guard Released 8 July 2011 Director John Michael McDonagh Starring Brendan Gleeson, Don Cheadle, Liam Cunningham, David Wilmot, Pat Shortt, Darren Healy, Rory Keenan, Mark Strong, Fionnula Flanagan, Katarina Cas Writer(s) John Michael McDonagh Producer(s) Chris Clark, Flora Fernandez-Marengo, Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe Origin Ireland Running Time 96 minutes Genre Thriller, crime, comedy Rating 15A

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The Wild Wesht!

Brendan Gleeson is back with a writer/director called McDonagh. You just know it’s going to be a black comedy, don’t you? Gleeson teamed up with Martin McDonagh on the Oscar-winning short Six Shooter and then again in the very successful In Bruges alongside Colin Farrell. This time he’s teamed up with Martin’s brother John Michael McDonagh who wrote the screenplay for Ned Kelly eight years ago.

Born and raised in London but of Irish descent, both the McDonagh brothers have an interest in how their traditional view of Ireland clashes with modern PC values. The action opens with Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Gleeson) a local guard in a remote village in Galway. Boyle is an unctuous character, used to doing things in his own unorthodox way. When a new recruit, Garda McBride (Rory Keenan), arrives from Dublin he is taken aback by Boyle’s methods and politically incorrect opinions. They discover a man who’s been shot and Boyle gets a call claiming a local petty criminal was responsible.

Boyle then goes to a briefing for all local officers by an F.B.I. agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle). Everett briefs them about four international drug traffickers in the area. Boyle initially outrages Everett and his own colleagues by making some racist remarks, but then informs them that they’re only looking for three men as one of the traffickers was the dead body he found.

Everett decides to come back with Boyle to investigate. Meanwhile the other three drug traffickers (Liam Cunningham, David Wilmot and Mark Strong) are in Boyle’s village and when the unfortunate Garda McBride stops them, they coolly shoot him dead and dump the body and car at a well-known suicide spot. Not wanting to work on his day off, Boyle lets Everett go off investigating on his own but because of his race and accent he is met with indifference and ignorance. Over a few pints, Boyle and Everett bond and the odd couple eventually team up to take on the traffickers.

You can see what McDonagh is trying to do here. Set up the character of the big, stereotypical culchie Guard and juxtapose him with the modern world of cops and criminals. Add in the fact that he reads philosophy, just to give him some depth and throw in a subplot about his dying mother (a barely used Fionnula Flanagan) to round him off with some sensitivity. The problem is, despite Brendan Gleeson’s best efforts, the character simply doesn’t work. It’s all over the place and never really convinces you enough to care.

McDonagh has assembled a very strong cast but they’re all let down by the weakness of his script. Cunningham, Wilmot and Strong do their best as the baddies but apart from a few self-indulgent lines about philosophers (what’s with all the philosophy?) they are neither memorable nor menacing. Don Cheadle is always good value and fair play to him for coming to Ireland to make a small movie but again, he’s given little enough to work with.

The plotting is poor and often nonsensical. So an FBI agent can just go off flashing his badge and start investigating like he’s in America can he? Ever heard of the concept of jurisdiction? Boyle is blackmailed for using prostitutes, the same prostitutes he openly cavorts with in the streets with both of them wearing attention seeking get-ups at his insistence. There are subplots that go nowhere like the Croatian wife of the dead Guard and when Boyle returns weapons that were discovered in a ditch to the I.R.A.

Some of the gags about the locals reacting to a black man in their midst are frankly outdated and borderline offensive. You wonder when McDonagh was actually last in Ireland because a black man on the streets isn’t exactly a rarity these days. Another scene where a Gaelic speaker reacts to Cheadle by telling him (in Irish) to go to England if he wanted to speak English is just ridiculous as well.

It’s a film that you want to like but the humour is simply too contrived to really work and the crappy shootout at the end really shows the limitations of the budget.

Overall, this is a big disappointment.

- Jim O’Connor