Sydney Film Festival - Film Review - The Guard

Still shot from 'The Guard" Brendan Gleeson as Sgt Gerry Boyle

Billed as one of the hottest tickets at the 2011 US Sundance Festival (it was the Opener for the Festival), this film has been described as a "wickedly funny action-packed" story and is filled with the best of Irish black humour. The plot focusses on Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) of the Irish Garda (Irish Police) who works as the sole Guard member in a sleepy coastal town. He operates according to his own rules and his network of contacts (his personal hobbies include escorts dressed in police uniform and the occasional consumption of confiscated illegal substances). His eccentric sense of order is severely disturbed by the arrival of an overly-enthusiastic young new colleague, the terminal illness of his foul-mouthed mother and the arrival in town of FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle), investigatiing an international drug ring which leads to Boyle's town. The witty script of this film plays on different cultural behaviours of the Irish, Americans and Brits, expertly handles the conventions of the unlikely-buddy movie and provides a black satire of the Irish Garda, the criminal underworld, the IRA (the local IRA representative wears a cowboy hat and drives a VW beetle) and the American FBI. Apart from a generous use of the 'F' word in the dialogue, this is an enjoyable  black comedy with an action-packed and surprisingly moving finale.