The reason I watched The Guard was because I believed it to be written and directed by the same team that gave us the inspired In Bruges a few years back. After having seen the film, I now discover that writer/director John Michael McDonagh has got nothing at all to do with the 2008 crime/comedy classic which is something of a surprise as The Guard has the same wonderfully cynical tone and black humour.
The Guard refers to Brendan Gleeson's Irish Police Sergeant, an unconventional but dedicated, foul mouthed, racist copper with a love of the booze and of prostitutes.
He's teamed with Don Cheadle's rather uptight FBI agent on the trail of some local drug smugglers who have been responsible for a recent spate of murders in Gleeson's sleepy county. If it weren't for the excessive profanity and violence you can see this being a top quality cop serial for the UK's channel Four. It's witty, character based, involving and features one of the more amusing cop pairings since Riggs met Murtaugh way back in 1987. Darkly funny, great characters, memorable dialogue with a touch of the western genre thrown in for good measure, The Guard is a bang tidy little gem to be sure.
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