The Guard

My my, now here is a film that I really wanted to love but like a lot of love affairs, it just didnt work out.  I think that could have been a big part of my viewing experience, I had heard so much about this film, so many positives that it was supposed to be the perfect Irish comedy.  As a comedy it works well, it has plenty of laughs but, to modify an old saying, it is less than the sum of it's parts.  Brendan Gleeson has created one of the best characters he has ever portrayed in Sgt Gerry Boyle but he doesnt work in this film.  Boyle is a very apathetic character, who doesnt care too much about his job, about the law or the community he is charged with keeping safe.  He is lonely, visiting his dying mother in a nursing home, hiring hookers, drinking on duty and taking drugs like some people take fag breaks in work, his languid, lazy style making him seem like an idiot but he is anything but.  It is fascinating to watch him on the screen but all the things around him dont seem to work, especially Don Cheadle's FBI agent Wendell Everett who is chasing 500 million dollars of smuggled drugs across to Galway.  Indeed, there is so much crammed into this film that it gets confusing as to what we are watching, is it a comedy, is it a western or an action film, a crime film or is it a character piece? 

Opening with a murder in a quiet Galway village, Boyle and his new partner, McBride investigate the crime until Boyle is pulled away to meet Everett, an FBI agent who needs Gardai assistance tracking a shipment of drugs he is trying capture.  Boyle recognises one of Everetts smuggling suspects as his dead John Doe.  So both men are thrown together to try solve both murder and drug trafficking case.  With the disappearance of McBride, Boyle's partner, (a bizarre and unexplained scene in the film) things take a turn for the worst for Boyle, and unfortunately for the film as well as it now descends into a hodge podge mix of buddy buddy/ fish out of water cop movie.

Writer/director John Michael McDonagh has created a wonderful character in Gerry Boyle, a great complex character that the viewer can really enjoy.  Unfortunately the relationship between him and Cheadle's black FBI agent just does not work.  While it is fractious and testy, watching them together just makes you think how much better Robert DeNiro and Charles Grodin did the very same thing in A Midnight Run.  The strongest parts of this film can be found in how McDonagh has built the film, filling it with tiny but fascinating insights into the modern Ireland this story finds itself in, throwing in very well defined references to the immigrant community within Ireland and the lazy and apathetic nature to events across Ireland, as represented by Boyle, but it isnt enough to save a film that just is not as entertaining as if should have been.  Liam Cunningham, one of the finest actors we've ever produced is wasted as the clever, philosophy spouting bad guy.  Mark Strong provides some great moments as the British drug smuggler that is afraid to get his hands dirty and Pat Shortt gives a nice little cameo as an IRA member looking for his guns in the Galway bogland.  The best part of the film is the child on he bike bike that follows Boyle all over the town, dying to see some real danger.

The Guard does work, dont get me wrong but I think it tries to be a little more than it should.  It would have worked better as a charcter film, exploring this fascinating character of Gerry Boyle, with a little comedy thrown in rather than a comedy where the character of Boyle is the central character.  The Guard represents the Gardai as broadly as possible, throwing it great moments that every person in every small Irish village or largetown can identify with with their Gardai.  The strongest card it plays is its portrayal of loss and loneliness throughout each character that would be historically linked with the barren west of Ireland.  In fact there are so many great things about this film that it makes it even more galling to think that it doesnt quite gel.  The western styling is a great asset to the film and one of the most enjoyable aspects, channelling the spirt of the Spaghetti westerns and High Noon, especially in the closing scenes.  Boyle truly is the last great cowboy of the west, it just happens to be the west of Ireland as oposed to the wild west of America.

The Guard is well worth a view, if just for Gleeson's wonderful turn as Gerry Boyle but I couldnt get over the fact that I wanted it to be better.

6/10