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The Guard

Presented by The Colonial Theatre at The Colonial Theatre

September 30-October 13, 2011

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“The Guard is little more than a salt-and-pepper cop yarn transposed to the middle of nowhere, Ireland. It has a wickedly smart script that keeps you on your toes, though, and it has from Brendan Gleeson a star performance of cruelly funny mastery. The movie is more pure, profane enjoyment than a body should have in the dog days of August, and when it’s over it evaporates, leaving only the acrid smoke of its dialogue and the memory of Gleeson reducing lesser mortals to cinders. Read Less

He plays Connemara police sergeant Gerry Boyle, more or less the whole department until he’s stuck with an earnest young recruit named Aidan (Rory Keenan) early in the going. We’re up in Gaelic country, so the cop cars and uniforms say ‘GARDA’ and very little surprises the local constabulary. The Guard opens with a horrific car crash that barely disturbs Boyle’s afternoon nap, and pretty soon he’s up to his thick neck in a complicated plot involving drug smugglers, corrupt detectives, a comely Croatian widow, and two happy hookers dressed as police ladies.

And Don Cheadle as Wendell Everett, an American FBI agent on the trail of the smugglers. No, there isn’t any reason for him to be here other than as an increasingly amused foil to the hero. The Irish cops know that a fellow like Boyle, smarter than any three of them put together but generally his own worst enemy, is best marginalized. Wendell, by contrast, is fascinated. “I can’t tell if you’re really [expletive] dumb or really [expletive] smart,’’ he marvels after Gerry has informed him that the only place in America he has visited is Disney World – by himself.

The Guard is built from the bones of all those great old Raymond Chandler crime novels that got turned into great old Humphrey Bogart movies: A lone honest man taking on the tarnished wheels of justice, etc., etc. The skin on those bones comes from Tarantino, sometimes too obviously. When the three smugglers – an engagingly lethal crew played by Liam Cunningham, David Wilmot, and Mark Strong – start arguing over their favorite philosophers during a getaway, you know someone has seen Pulp Fiction a few dozen too many times.” (Ty Burr, The Boston Globe)

Directed by John Michael McDonagh. Ireland. 2011. R. 96 min. Sony. 35mm.