Review: ‘The Guard’

"The Guard" is a movie with a screw loose. A mixture of comedy, thriller and Western but set in a remote corner of Ireland, this film starring Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle follows its own loopy rhythm and moves at its own pace. It's not a great movie, but the characters are so fun and the dialogue so snappy that you love living in the world that writer-director John Michael McDonagh has come up with. Its charming modesty is its best feature.

Like an Irish riff on the cop-buddy movie by way of "Fargo," "The Guard" introduces us to Sgt. Gerry Boyle (Gleeson), a policeman out in the boonies where not much of anything happens. That's just fine with Boyle, who has to keep an eye on his dying mother (Fionnula Flanagan) when he isn't inviting high-class hookers over to his place. But soon drug traffickers invade his sleepy town, which brings out an FBI agent (Cheadle) who reluctantly needs Boyle's help to find the criminals.

McDonagh's feature debut ultimately feels more like a spec sample than a fully developed film. He shows off a stylish eye for landscapes and noir mood (aided by longtime Kubrick cinematographer/crew member Larry Smith), and he has a real knack for lively dialogue and layered characters that come across as real people rather than a collection of fanciful quirks. Probably to a fault, McDonagh doesn't really care all that much about what the traffickers (led nicely by Liam Cunningham and Mark Strong) are doing; the plot's just an excuse for us to watch Boyle navigate through his life.

And what an interesting life it is. Gleeson has made a habit of playing tough guys, whether it's in "In Bruges" or the Harry Potter films, and Boyle is certainly another gent who takes no grief from anyone. But McDonagh's script provides an opportunity for Gleeson to play a much richer character than normal: Boyle hasn't quite given up on life, but he seems resigned to a certain level of vague contentment that leaves room for plenty of loneliness and regrets. He may also be a racist, but one of McDonagh's best moves is that, like real people, his characters aren't all of any one thing. They have secrets and mysteries, and not all of them are going to be resolved by the end.

Because "The Guard" is more concerned with Boyle, Cheadle's FBI agent is largely a sounding board, straight man and obstacle to Boyle's journey. Consequently, Cheadle mostly wanders the periphery of this film. In the studio version of "The Guard," they'd become unlikely partners, trading one-liners in between shootouts. But McDonagh's film is its own unique creature, armed with a cockeyed take on its mingling of tones and genres. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, the film doesn't add up to a lot, but it does show McDonagh's potential as a craftsman of small, idiosyncratic stories. Maybe he's destined for bigger things. Or maybe like Boyle, he'll happily just keep doing what he's doing while the rest of the world goes by.

Grade: B