The Guard

 1/4

Starring: Brendan Gleeson, Don Cheadle, Liam Cunningham, Mark Strong, David Wilmot, Fionulla Flanagan

Rated R for Pervasive Language, Some Violence, Drug Material and Sexual Content

The longer I do this job, the less patience I have for movies like "The Guard."  Movies that not only fail but don't even seem to be trying to do anything.  It's a comedy without many laughs, a drama with no depth, an action movie with little action.

Gerry Boyle (Gleeson) is a misanthropic cop who insults and berates everyone in his range of fire.  Admittedly, some of his anti-PC behavior is funny, but that's all there is to him.  He's the kind of guy who'd steal the drugs off a dead man and do them right then and there.  But he has a soft spot for his ailing mother Eileen (Flanagan).  When an American cop named Wendell Everett (Cheadle) comes to town hunting some drug dealers, he's partnered up with Gerry, who is none too pleased with this, and makes no secret of it.

Buddy thrillers like the overrated "Lethal Weapon" aren't particularly complicated affairs.  But they need an appropriate amount of action and laughs to work.  With "The Guard," the recipe is all wrong.  The opening scene is a good example, where a group of louts are drinking and doing drugs in the car before they inevitably crash and die (that's the aforementioned scene where Gerry steals their drugs).  By showing the corpses lying about makes whatever comic potential it had evaporate.  Even worse is that they're all teenagers.  To expect an audience to find this funny makes me wonder what the director was thinking.

Then again, the film was directed by John Michael McDonagh, who would later go on to make the worthless "War on Everyone."  That too was a comedy made by people from Mars.  Either McDonagh is a sociopath or all the filmmaking talent went to his brother Martin (who, incidentally, made "The Banshees of Inesherin").  McDonagh has no gift for taste and tone, both of which are crucial for any comedy.  I'm not criticizing his choices of comic targets, as anyone and anything can be subject for comedy if played correctly ("Family Guy" has proved this time and time again).  I'm criticizing him for not finding a successful way to make his subjects funny.

If nothing else, this movie goes to show you just how amazing an actor Brendan Gleeson is.  Gerry Boyle is so poorly written that it's a miracle that anyone could have played him successfully.  The film veers between comedy, action and drama with wild abandon and no one at the helm.  Yet Gleeson manages to make Gerry feel like a real person.  The fact that his scenes with Fionulla Flanagan are too heavy for even a warped comedy like this doesn't mean that Gleeson doesn't play them well.  He understands the tone that McDonagh was aiming for and missed by a mile.  His co-star, Don Cheadle, doesn't have as much to do, but the two actors click.  They're not a legendary team, but they have a comfortable rapport with each other.  Able support is provided by the ever reliable Liam Cunningham, Mark Strong and a totally deranged David Wilmot, but to be quite frank, the film is below their talents.

"The Guard" was never going to be a great movie, but it could have been a painless way to spend 90 minutes.  But this movie is a botched job by a director without a close about what he wants his film to be.  Scene after scene misses the mark, and as a result the film becomes more excruciating by the minute.  Not even the efforts of Brendan Gleeson (which, under the circumstances, can only be decided as heroic) can save this stinker.