The Guard | Little White Lies

The Guard

18 Aug 2011 / Released: 19 Aug 2011

Police officer in uniform speaking with young boy in rural field.
Police officer in uniform speaking with young boy in rural field.
3

Anticipation.

American cop show meets the Emerald Isle. What’s the craic?

4

Enjoyment.

The craic is grand.

4

In Retrospect.

The funniest action comedy for a long time.

Amer­i­can cop show meets the Emer­ald Isle equals Lethal Weapon gone Gaelic.

It’s not often a char­ac­ter will swag­ger onto the sil­ver screen with such an air of cool, such self-assured aplomb, such a win­ning beer bel­ly, that only one word will suf­fice to describe him. That word is dude’, and the dude in ques­tion is Sergeant Ger­ry Boyle; played by Bren­dan Glee­son in John Michael McDonagh’s The Guard. While no one could live up to Jeff Bridges’ blue­print of The Dude him­self, Sergeant Boyle is cer­tain­ly the kind of guy you could imag­ine shar­ing a White Russ­ian or a dirty joke with.

This par­tic­u­lar Irish policeman’s drink of choice, how­ev­er, is Guin­ness – and plen­ty of it. Along with a pen­chant for hir­ing pros­ti­tutes and drop­ping tabs of acid con­fis­cat­ed on patrol, Boyle’s meth­ods are far from ortho­dox. So when he’s teamed up with straight-edge FBI agent Wen­dell Everett (Don Chea­dle) to inves­ti­gate an ille­gal cocaine-smug­gling ring oper­at­ing around the Emer­ald Isle, the result is Lethal Weapon gone Gael­ic. Whether it means watch­ing him inap­pro­pri­ate­ly grope a corpse for clues, or drink a whole milk­shake in one go to assert his author­i­ty, Everett must patient­ly accus­tom him­self to Boyle and the Irish way.

In a hilar­i­ous clash of cul­tures and con­duct, the loud­est laughs will emanate from the absurd way both cops and rob­bers traipse around Ire­land attempt­ing to mim­ic the Amer­i­can­isms they have adopt­ed from tele­vi­sion shows and pop cul­ture. A pas­tiche of both Amer­i­can and agrar­i­an val­ues, The Guard is a high-octane world of drug-smug­gling, dol­lar bills and explo­sions, fre­quent­ly inter­rupt­ed by shag­gy dogs, small-town racism and dodgy deal­ings with the IRA.

The film even ends with a Mex­i­can stand­off that unabashed­ly pokes fun at audi­ence pre­con­cep­tions of crime dra­mas while clev­er­ly uphold­ing the thrill of the kill that the genre so demands. With the excep­tion, per­haps, of Nico­las Cage’s mer­ce­nary cop in last year’s Bad Lieu­tenant, the unlike­ly (yet strange­ly like­able) anti­hero has been a much missed arche­type in recent years. Though his shape may be rotund and his com­ments often cringe-wor­thy, Gleeson’s Boyle offers a defi­ant and tri­umphant return.

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