"The Guard": Shaggy Dog Irish Cop Tale Thinks It's More Clever Than It Is

Comments (0) By Nick Pinkerton Wednesday, Aug 3 2011

Location Info

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Sundance Kabuki Cinemas

1881 Post
San Francisco, CA 94115

Category: Movie Theaters

Region: Japantown/Pacific Heights

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Embarcadero Center Cinema

1 Embarcadero Center
San Francisco, CA 94111

Category: Movie Theaters

Region: Embarcadero

Details

Rated R. Opens Friday at the Embarcadero and the Sundance Kabuki.

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The Guard is a shaggy-man character study, its subject Sgt. Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson), a fiftysomething policeman in western Ireland. No by-the-book cop, he spends his days off romping with hookers and has no qualms about gulping MDMA from the pockets of a freshly dead teenager. He also displays a proletarian literary bent, visits his ailing mum to cheer her with pained jocularity, and, unlike his better-turned-out colleagues, holds himself to an unorthodox-but-unbendable code of honor. As an FBI agent visiting to intercept a massive drug drop, Don Cheadle is on hand to play the straight man and to instruct the audience to grudgingly appreciate Boyle for what he is, despite his racial ribbing of the Don Rickles all-in-good-fun school ("I'm Irish, sir. Racism is a part of me culture," Boyle announces). You sense that The Guard is John Michael McDonagh's eulogy for the brusque, warts-and-all character of a passing generation of tough, working-class Irishmen, much as Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino was for vintage Americanism. But the film eschews any pretense of social reality for cinematographic fancifulness and too-clever-by-half dialogue, much of it from a trio of drug smugglers livening up Boyle's jurisdiction with homicides. As Cheadle drifts around a vaguely thought-through role, The Guard bets everything on Gleeson's boyish twinkle — and tends to overestimate its own raffish charm.