The Guard – 2 1/2 Buckets

Brendan Gleeson headlines The Guard as the Irish lawman referenced by the title, who is the kind of racist coot with whom you wouldn’t be caught dead associating in public, but deviously cheer on in the dark of a movie theater. His name is Gerry Boyle and he presides over the rural (and partly native Gaelic) County Galway, where responding to car accidents is usually the extent of his duties, but he nonetheless behaves as curmudgeonly as a New York City  movie cop. Gleeson disappears into the role–hopefully it isn’t an insult to say that I view Boyle as being distinctly in his wheelhouse–and the result is a darkly funny, perversely lovable character. The only problem: an involving lead personality doesn’t make a complete movie.

What is especially crushing about The Guard’s lack of the necessary amount of substance is that it halfway embraces the solution to this problem: operating as a buddy cop film. Don Cheadle plays FBI agent Wendell Everett, Boyle’s foil, who comes to County Galway on evidence that it may be the next location involved in a $500-million international cocaine-smuggling ring. The interaction between Boyle and Everett is priceless, as the former–a black American–unceasingly fuels the flame that is the latter’s riotously offensive preconceived worldview. Not only are their scenes together snappily scripted by filmmaker John Michael McDonagh, the chemistry between the two actors is also bountiful; one scene in which Gleeson assumes that Cheadle grew up in the projects due to his race, for instance, is bitingly funny because the actors are able to deliver it with the sense of believability necessary for it to be shocking. But unfortunately, after introducing Cheadle, the film’s focus remains too close on its title character alone (his love of prostitutes, his interaction with the immigrant wife of a young officer who is killed by the drug smugglers, etc.) Had it been more consistently rooted in the interaction between opposites, bringing out the meatiest in both characters through comic juxtaposition, The Guard would have been able to better substantiate its hour-and-a-half running time.

If when reading that last paragraph, you felt that writer/director John Michael McDonagh’s name sounded familiar, it is because his brother, Martin, made 2008’s cult favorite In Bruges, which also starred Gleeson (albeit in a much more understated, somber role). One senses that John may have been driven by a bit of sibling envy in making The Guard, because it is very similar to Martin’s film on a structural level: the first two acts are dominated by uneventful, wry comedy and then the third explodes in climactic violence. This tonal shift was jarring in In Bruges because the perspective shifted from the protagonists to their aggressor (Ralph Fiennes), but it clicks perfectly here because it allows McDonagh to implement the aforementioned buddy-cop style. Even though the outcome of the action-finale seems unimportant–the entire drug-smuggling plot is essentially just filler to give these characters a platform–the sequence works because it effectively transposes Everett and Boyle. While The Guard is a worthy entertainment as is, it could have been so much better if only McDonagh had been handed all its scenes with the same sense of dynamism.

* * *

Attack the Block (2011, Ireland). Produced by Paul Brett, Don Cheadle, Chris Clark, Elizabeth Eves, Flora Fernandez-Marengo, Ed Guiney, Ralph Kamp, Andrew Lowe, Lee Magiday, Martin McDonagh, Paul Myler, David Nash, Tim Smith, and  Lenore Zerman. Directed and written for the screen by John Michael McDonagh. Starring Brendan Gleeson, Don Cheadle, Liam Cunningham, David Wilmot, Rory Keenan, Mark Strong, Fionnula Flanagan, and Dominique McElligott. Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. Rated R, with a running time of 96 minutes.