THE GUARD stars Brendan Gleeson as Sgt. Gerry Boyle, who for a drug taking, whoring sass-mouthing police officer is actually the least corrupt cop in Western Ireland. Who knew?! He lives quite a happy life and the last thing he wants is an FBI agent investigating a serious drug shipment coming in off the coast of his quiet little town. Unfortunately for him that's exactly what he gets.
Now there's not much to the story (and unlike other reviewers I'm not going to tell you anymore than what I've said above), it's fairly predictable and there was no major twist at the end, although it would have been good to have one. Fortunately for this film it has a cracking cast and even if it didn't Brendan Gleeson's performance would be enough to have me raving about it and demanding you all go and see it when it opens on Thursday.
Gleeson and Cheadle have some excellent chemistry on screen and the hilarity of their banter had the whole audience laughing out loud. One of my favourite lines was "I can't tell if you're really motherfucking dumb or really motherfucking smart". And it's true, some of the things Boyle says are really dumb, but there's something about him that is pretty clued in. Mark Strong is also worth writing home about, he always plays a fantastic villain and doesn't let you down in this one. A dear friend is a Mark Strong lover and I'll be telling her it's definitely worth checking him out even if he is only on screen for a total of around 20 minutes tops.
Written and directed by John Michael McDonagh brother of IN BRUGES writer/director Martin McDonagh and you can definitely tell. If you didn't know any better you'd assume it was by the same guy, but that's not a bad thing...IN BRUGES was fantastic.
If you enjoyed IN BRUGES, SNATCH and the like you should enjoy this. Hitting Australian cinemas Thursday the 25th of August 3.5 out of 5.
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