“I’m not sure if you’re really dumb or really smart.” So
says the FBI man played by Don Cheadle to Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleason), a
sergeant in the Irish Garda stationed in Galway on the west coast of Ireland
where the people have surly attitudes toward outsiders (particularly Dubliners)
and sometimes they insist on speaking only Irish. Gleeson, a bulky bear of a
man, is just the right actor to pull off the delicate balance between stupid
and clever. His character might be equal parts ‘Mad-Eye’ Moody from the Harry Potter films and Martin Cahill,
his character in The General.
The Guard, written
and directed by John Michael McDonagh, has a darkly sinister comic sensibility
akin to In Bruges, also starring
Gleeson and written and directed by McDonagh’s brother Martin. The film opens
with a car careering along the country roads of Galway, going just off camera
as we see Gerry in his patrol car and then hear the screeching tires and crash
of metal on the soundtrack. Gerry’s expression doesn’t change as he witnesses
and then approaches the scene to find an overturned car and several bodies
strewn about the road. He then rummages through a dead man’s pockets for the
drugs he knows he’ll find – not as evidence but for personal recreational use.
This scene plays as black comedy, setting the tone for the rest of the film,
mainly because of the complete absence of blood and gore that should be present
on the road.
Later, Gerry and his newly transferred (from Dublin)
partner, McBride (Rory Keenan), investigate with a murder scene with some
bizarre circumstances, employing some droll humor to keep it just this side of
uncomfortable. It turns out the murder is connected to a band of highly wanted
drug smugglers whose operations have extended into the United States,
attracting the assistance of the FBI and agent Wendell Everett (Cheadle) into
the mix and turning the film into an odd fish-out-of-water buddy cop movie.
In their initial meeting during an official briefing
given by Wendell, Gerry unloads a litany of racist stereotypes – “I thought all
drug smugglers were black. Or Mexican.” – which offends Wendell, not only as a
black man, but also as an American who is accustomed to a higher level of
decorum and people who follow procedures. This is one of the running gags, the
idea that Americans are uptight about rules. Gleeson’s idiotic remarks,
however, extend so far into the absurd that we have to wonder how much is true
ignorance and how much is a button-pushing put on.
The Guard is
another in a long line of crime films that owes a lot to Quentin Tarantino.
There’s a lot of talking for its own sake, which adds flavor, and quite a bit
of morbid humor. It’s all a little uneven, never really discovering, like In Bruges, what it wants to be. But
there are occasional gemstones in the screenplay as when the cops receiving
money in a payoff ask, “Is it all there?” These small town cops’ only
experience with payola probably comes from movies where that question is always
asked. But Clive Cornell (Mark Strong), the smuggler making the payment, is
flabbergasted by such idiocy. Think about the logic of a criminal shortchanging
the cops in the payoff.
Gleeson’s performance and the writing of his character
are perhaps the principal reasons to see The
Guard. Here is a guy who will nonchalantly take illicit drugs, dally around
with prostitutes, and blithely tamper with evidence at a crime scene, but who
will refuse a payoff, not for any upstanding moral reasons, but more because he
just doesn’t want the other guys to win. Maybe also because he doesn’t like
people, be they Garda from Dublin, FBI agents from America, or drug smugglers
from London, coming to his town telling him what to do. He’s not all cold and
uncaring. He takes kindly to the wife of a man who’s gone missing (after
running afoul of the smugglers) and tries to do right by her, giving Gerry a
bit of pathos.
Overall, you should bear in mind that the humor in The Guard is laced with local color. I
spent a couple of summers working with young people from that part of Ireland (“The
Wesht”, as they say) and my sense is that they’re quite proud of their heritage
and comic sensibilities. There were likely quite a lot of jokes that will go
way over the head of anyone not from Ireland, but then, that’s what helps set
it apart from everything else. It doesn’t try to be all things to all people
(even if the casting of Don Cheadle feels like a blatant attempt to secure U.S.
distribution), it just exists as it is – a unique little film from a unique
little place.
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