Was drawn to this for the comparisons with In Bruges which I loved for its dark humour.
The Guard also stars Brendan Gleeson as Sargent Gerry Boyle, a policeman in rural Ireland who really can't be arsed with all that. So when the FBI role into town led by Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) because they've had a tip off that drug smugglers are going to be docking nearby Boyle couldn't be less interested.
Brendan Gleeson does an excellent job as Boyle who is ultimately bored by the banality of his work and life. He's a man with a penchant for prostitutes and secretly well read which is key to his character. If he was just stupid bumpkin policemen the humour would only half work but there is a hint that Boyle is far cleverer than all that and is being provocative for his own amusement.
And it is laugh out loud funny at times and a little bit obvious at times. It doesn't quite plunge to the dark depth of In Bruges but it does have a satisfactory ending and did put a smile on my face. Good friday night DVD fodder I'd say and I'm going to give it 60%.
On IMDb it's got a rating of 79% with the Metacritic score listed as 78%. While on Rotten Tomatoes it has an audience rating of 86% and a critics rating of 96% although that figure isn't classed as a consensus yet.
Ha! It was indeed "Friday night DVD fodder" - Josh and I watched it last night. the ending makes the film, lifting it out of the realms of "average". For me, the accents were a touch too "thick" and I can see why the Irish loved it but it didn't go down all that well here. Mark Strong excels in his role and the joke about gays in the IRA will be remembered for quite some time. I'm not sure that the storyline relating to Boyle's mother was entirely useful and it felt like it was grafted in to provide character depth which was unnecessary given that Boyle was already given a lot of character facets. for the record, it should have been "sympathy for Mr Vengeance" but the DVD was duff so needs to head back to Amazon.
Posted by: Simon Pudsey | 03/24/2012 at 08:03 PM