The Guard
Warning: content is guaranteed to offend.
The Guard is certainly not for the faint-hearted: it’s chillingly brutal, breathtakingly coarse, wearily cynical and, most of all, screamingly funny.
How can that be? I hear you ask.
The Guard has an intelligent script, complex and surprising characters and superb production values. The star, and I use the word advisedly, is Brendan Gleeson, who plays sly small-town Irish police sergeant Gerry Boyle. Gleeson was terrific in the 2008 hit In Bruges and he is even better here. One of my viewing companions said he thought Gleeson had the one of the deadest deadpans he’s ever seen.
Out West (in Connemara, County Galway), Sergeant Boyle’s eccentric approach to policing seems to work. When a new sidekick, Aidan McBride, is sent from Dublin, he struggles to cope with Boyle’s jaw-droppingly confrontational manner. A murder has occurred and it also seems that international drug smugglers are moving into Boyle’s patch. That attracts national and international law enforcement attention. FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) is dispatched and the two men seemingly from different universes have to work together. Everett is suave, intelligent, urbane and hopelessly out of his depth in Connemara. Boyle is blithely offensive and seemingly unconscious of (or untroubled by) the effect he has on others.
In an early encounter, Everett wonders whether Boyle is unbelievably dumb or unbelievably smart, and it is that tension between what Boyle appears to be and what he is, that helps to drive the film.
I’ve had to paraphrase what Everett said in the interests of decency - the film’s dialogue is littered with coarse language. It is as if crudity is the default mode of thought for most characters. And it works - the film is all the better for the swearing - it’s a virtual characterisation device.
While Boyle takes his day off - and spends it joyously in the company of some out-of-town hookers in police uniforms - Everett begins his investigation, only to find that the townsfolk either speak only Gaelic or choose not to speak to strangers at all, especially when they’re watching hurling.
The drug smugglers themselves are a real piece of work - discussing the philosophy of Nietzsche before callously dispatching anyone who gets in their way. It’s hard to imagine how three such characters can be so funny - but they are. One claims that body disposal is not in his contract because when he signed up as a drug smuggler there was no mention of heavy lifting. Watch out for mad-eyed O’Leary the self-confessed sociopath too.
Everywhere you look there are minor characters who charm, alarm or amuse you. Boyle’s dying mother Eileen (Fionnula Flanagan) is sweet, tough and eyes-wide-open-defiant, while Boyle’s informant and number-one fan Eugene (Michael Og Lane) is disturbingly streetwise and chillingly old before his time, though he appears to be about nine. The obligatory IRA man in his Volkswagen beetle is wonderful too. I wonder; is he just a rollicking comic plot distraction or does he provide a clue to the film’s unresolved ending?
The cinematography and the music are sensational. Writer/director John Michael McDonagh (brother of the director of the aforementioned In Bruges) makes a musical meal of the comic connection between the West of Ireland and the Wild West. Leaving on A Jetplane is a song I have despised for decades but I forgave it a lot in this film, and Ode to Billie Joe plays a part in setting the scene for the craziest police-bribing sequence imaginable. The film is a visual treat as well. I liked the way the interiors were framed and especially the way they were lit.
The Guard is tough and gritty but it has a good heart somewhere, and it’s as funny as anything I’ve seen on a big screen in ages.
The Village Theatre will show its final screening of The Guard this weekend. If it sounds remotely like something you’d like, it’s worth the effort to go to.
Neil Wilson
