The
Guard
Irish Garda (police officer) Sgt. Gerry
Boyle is a lot of things to a lot of people. He is loud, rude, obnoxious,
bigoted, jaded, selfish, antagonistic, misogynistic, perhaps alcoholic…
As
played by spectacular Irish actor Brendan Gleeson, he is also the funniest
and most vital film character so far this year.
Of
course those attributes are just surface level. Watching Boyle over the
length of The Guard makes you realize that at least part of it is an
act to get people to underestimate him. The character turns out to be an
odd Gaelic mix of Archie Bunker and Lt. Columbo.
He
is a contradiction and a contrarian. He is sometimes corrupt and yet has a
stubborn sense of right and wrong. He is equally zealous about whores and
Disneyland. And he has impassioned conversations with criminals about the
meaning of “Ode to Billie Joe.”
As
you can see, screenwriter and first-time director John Michael McDonagh does
not believe in creating clichéd characters. In fact, the stubborn
eccentricity and dark humor of the script takes what could be a pretty
standard police drama and makes it a gonzo joy.
Gleeson is a terrific Irish character actor who is probably best known in
the States for playing Mad Eye Moody in the Harry Potter movies.
However, a few years ago when Irish playwright Martin McDonagh (The Guard
director’s younger brother) gave McDonagh the opportunity to carry a
film with In Bruges, Gleeson showed he was more than up to the task.
The Guard
strongly demonstrates that this is true. On the surface, at least Boyle is
a character is a polar opposite of his In Bruges character Ken, who
was a thoughtful and sensitive hit man who is suddenly reconsidering
everything he had previously believed.
We
are introduced to Boyle as a cop on the side of a road when a bunch of
drugged up miscreants crash their car nearby him. He seems genuinely
inconvenienced by dealing with the clean-up, but not so much that he doesn’t
appropriate their drugs for himself.
Soon
he is berating new recruits, making casually racist comments to a visiting
American FBI agent (Don Cheadle) and slacking his way through his
investigation.
However, if you assume
that Boyle is just what you see on the surface, then you are falling into
his trap. He wants people to underestimate him. The more you know Boyle,
the more you realize you don’t know him at all.
Boyle starts revealing
many unexpected layers – he is literate, a cinemafile,
a gourmand, and surprisingly respects women in general more than men. He
also is a fine policeman – going at it from an eccentric angle but more
determined that right prevail than anyone else in his squad.
The
storyline itself is nothing all that special, but the off-the-wall script
gives the updated Old West setting some wonderfully off-kilter reverb.
The Guard is not a plot-driven film, though, it is much more character
driven.
Cheadle’s FBI guy is more of the straight man in the situation. He has a
wonderful slow burn and Cheadle – who is undoubtedly the best-known actor in
the film – generously allows his co-star most of the film’s great moments.
The
bad guys are also far different than one would expect, they are smart,
sensitive and kind of bored by their life of crime. They’d rather be
discussing the correct pronunciation of Nietzsche than their own drug trade.
The Guard
takes the cop buddy genre and turns it on its head. It is smart, literate
and funny and definitely worth searching out.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2011 PopEntertainment.com.
All rights reserved. Posted: July 29, 2011.
