Back in 2008 Martin McDonagh made very funny dark comedy In Bruges. Not to be out done, his brother John Michael McDonagh made his own dark comedy, The Guard.
Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) is a Gardai Sergeant for a rural community in Galway in West Ireland. He is a very unconventional police officer, willing to try drugs, sleeps with prostitutes, shows a great amount of knowledge and his mother is dying. But not interested in the grander schemes of life. In Galway are a group of gangsters (Liam Cunningham, Mark Strong and David Wilmot) who plan to import $500 Million of cocaine into the British Isles and the straight lace FBI Agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) is leading the investigate. Soon Boyle ends up working with Wendell when investigating the death of a drug dealer and the disappearance of Boyle's partner, Aidan McBride (Rory Keenan).
The Guard is a dialogue driven comedy and it was reliance on top performance from Gleeson and Cheadle and both of them deliver. The Guard is a buddy comedy with a little bit of Hot Fuzz thrown in. The Guard's final shootout was very similar to the final shootout in Hot Fuzz, if played a little more realistic in its style of action.
The score by the band Calexico was awesome, giving The Guard a Western score that easily honours anything from The Man With No Name Trilogy. It was epic, upbeat and dramatic when it needs to be. It is inkeeping to a Western theme of a peaceful, wilderness turn into a lawless area as violence crimes start to happen. There is also a play on a typical American attitude of some town and rural people having a distrust people from big cities, where people from Galway have a dislike and distrust of people from the big 'bad' city of Dublin.
At times some of the jokes do not work and it does take a little time for the film to get going. The scene where Boyle sells some guns to a IRA Cowboy (Pat Shortt) felt very out of place. For me it is a film that offers smiles and chuckles more then lots of full out laughs, but plenty of people do enjoy this film considering the critical reaction it received. But personally I think the film is a little overrated.
Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) is a Gardai Sergeant for a rural community in Galway in West Ireland. He is a very unconventional police officer, willing to try drugs, sleeps with prostitutes, shows a great amount of knowledge and his mother is dying. But not interested in the grander schemes of life. In Galway are a group of gangsters (Liam Cunningham, Mark Strong and David Wilmot) who plan to import $500 Million of cocaine into the British Isles and the straight lace FBI Agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) is leading the investigate. Soon Boyle ends up working with Wendell when investigating the death of a drug dealer and the disappearance of Boyle's partner, Aidan McBride (Rory Keenan).
The Guard is a dialogue driven comedy and it was reliance on top performance from Gleeson and Cheadle and both of them deliver. The Guard is a buddy comedy with a little bit of Hot Fuzz thrown in. The Guard's final shootout was very similar to the final shootout in Hot Fuzz, if played a little more realistic in its style of action.
The score by the band Calexico was awesome, giving The Guard a Western score that easily honours anything from The Man With No Name Trilogy. It was epic, upbeat and dramatic when it needs to be. It is inkeeping to a Western theme of a peaceful, wilderness turn into a lawless area as violence crimes start to happen. There is also a play on a typical American attitude of some town and rural people having a distrust people from big cities, where people from Galway have a dislike and distrust of people from the big 'bad' city of Dublin.
At times some of the jokes do not work and it does take a little time for the film to get going. The scene where Boyle sells some guns to a IRA Cowboy (Pat Shortt) felt very out of place. For me it is a film that offers smiles and chuckles more then lots of full out laughs, but plenty of people do enjoy this film considering the critical reaction it received. But personally I think the film is a little overrated.