Nobody Move, This Is A Review: The Guard

The Guard (15A)
Brendan Gleeson stars as Sergeant Gerry Boyle, a Connemara-based Garda whose feckless existence is compromised when FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) appears in Galway on the hunt for a gang of international drug smugglers. Written and directed by John Michael McDonagh, brother of the award-winning playwright Martin McDonagh, The Guard employs the narrative structure of a conventional police procedural to unleash a wickedly black comedy of manners. The culture-clash between the focused and driven Everett and the irreverent and occasionally criminal Boyle is sharply observed, with Cheadle (who co-produces) content to play the straight man to Gleeson’s foul-mouthed stream of non sequiturs. Both actors are in fine fettle, and the rest of the cast - including Liam Cunningham, Larry Wilmot and Fionnula Flanagan - are happy to cruise along in their slipstream and heighten the surreal sense of humour, which is rooted in a very Irish resentment of authority in any form. The latter stages flatten the characterisations as McDonagh sets in train a manic finale, which is a little too derivative of the comedy-crime caper staples to be truly satisfying, but for the most part The Guard is one of the funniest comedies of the year to date. **** - Declan Burke

This review first appeared in the Irish Examiner

Wicka Wicka Wild West

I’ve no idea what it is they’re putting in the water over there these days, but the west coast of Ireland, if what we’re seeing on screen is to be believed, is going to hell in a hand-basket. RTE’s acclaimed TV series about a lone rural cop, ‘Single-Handed’, recently had its fourth run; Ken Bruen’s THE GUARDS was adapted as ‘Jack Taylor’, starring Iain Glen; now comes ‘The Guard’, which this week opened the Sundance Festival World Dramatic Competition. To wit:

‘The Guard’ is a thriller-comedy set on the west coast of Ireland where Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) is a small-town cop with a confrontational personality, a subversive sense of humour, a dying mother, a fondness for prostitutes, and absolutely no interest whatsoever in the international cocaine-smuggling ring that has brought FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) to his door.

The film is written and directed by John Michael McDonagh, brother to playwright and film director Martin McDonagh (‘The Lonesome West’ et al, ‘In Bruges’), who doubles up here, along with Don Cheadle, as executive producer. The big attraction for me here is Brendan Gleeson, though, an immensely likeable and always watchable actor, and by all accounts a thoroughly nice bloke to boot. Variety likes him too, with the gist of its Sundance review running thusly:

“… it’s Gleeson who rightly owns the screen as a beer-swilling, crotch-grabbing, Derringer-firing crusader with one hell of a filthy mouth to go along with his heart of gold,” while the director John Michael McDonagh’s “filmmaking crackles with energy.”

According to Element Pictures, the movie will be getting a summer release here in Ireland. Should be a cracker.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: Brooklyn’s Finest (18s)

Three Brooklyn cops have very different careers: Eddie (Richard Gere), about to retire, no longer cares about doing the right thing; undercover drug agent Sal (Ethan Hawke) is bending the rules until they break; while Tango (Don Cheadle) is so far undercover that he’s beginning to forget who the good guys are.
  Antoine Fuqua’s sprawling tale is a mini-epic, with the three parallel narratives playing off one another and intersecting in a final, cataclysmic finale. It’s been quite a while since Fuqua’s Training Day (2001), which was his finest hour until now, but he brings a similar quality of intensity and gritty reality to this production.
  The film asks interesting moral questions of its protagonists. While the narrative is ostensibly about the war taking place either side of the thin blue line, in reality the story is more concerned with characters who are at war with themselves. To a large extent, the conflict in Brooklyn’s Finest is internalised, which is a difficult concept to portray convincingly on screen.
  All three leads put in fine performances, with Gere and Hawke surprisingly impressive after years of mediocre work. Richard Gere, in particular, turns in an eye-opening performance: overtly passive, given that his character is simply clock-watching until he can retire, Gere invests his deadpan role with a rare depth, particularly in the few scenes he shares with Eddie’s hooker-squeeze, Chantel (Shannon Kane), where Eddie’s sense of longing for something - anything - he can commit to is palpable.
  Also impressive is Ethan Hawke, whom we tend to associate with fey, sensitive characters. Fuqua - who previously worked with Hawke on Training Day - draws a compelling performance from the actor, who creates a character who is to be pitied and sympathised with despite his dirty dealings.
  The supporting cast plays an unusually strong part, with Wesley Snipes, Vincent D’Onofrio, Lili Taylor and Ellen Barkin all good value for money.
  The movie is arguably too long for its own good, but each separate strand works on its own merits, and it seems churlish to suggest that any of the triptych should be cut back. Fuqua combines a steady pace with dynamic editing to create a tension that seeps through all three stories. He also keeps the story rooted in the gritty, scuzzy details of life on the streets and invests proceedings with a degree of realism that is at times disturbing, all the while blending the cops’ domestic and professional lives, and the subtle ways in which the line between right and wrong can be blurred. - Declan Burke