Culture

Director: John Michael McDonagh (4.5/5)


 Your average Dubliner would think a small town in rural Ireland wouldn’t need a policeman. Connemara, 200 km west of Dublin, doesn’t have a cop, well, at least not a conventional one. Jerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) could not care less about the law. With a thick accent, a taste for drugs and often a pint in his hand, his blue uniform is the only thing that gives his profession away. The last thing Jerry wants is for a new constable to appear giving him cappuccinos. At the same time as the new recruit arrives, a death disturbs the peace of the county as the national Garda Síochána investigate its connection to an international drug cartel.

“I thought” Jerry comments at a national meeting, “only black lads were drug dealers, and Mexicans. Drug mules they call them.” Jerry has been part of the Gardaí for too long to be suspended. And though he’s in his mid-forties with a beer belly, he is sharp and knows his people well. It takes time for African-American FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle), a replacement, to get used to the Gaelic-speaking, small and close-knit community. Jerry, on the other hand, knows he has to patiently wait for tip-offs and give arms concessions to a still active wing of the IRA.

The Guard is a film about drugs, guns and explosions. It is also a reflection of small-town Ireland, through the interactions between a stereotypically Irish cop and a black FBI agent. “We’re not in Atlanta, we’re in Galway!”, Jerry reminds his colleague, and the shots of the beautiful landscape confirm this. The Guard will make you cringe and laugh, all while you are treated to some metaphysical debate from the drug cartel and some fitting music. Director John Michael McDonagh does an excellent job at fitting it all together, and the end product fills the cinema and makes us leave laughing.
 
With the action, the girls, and his deference to authority and law and order, it is well worth wondering if Jerry Boyle is the new James Bond.