I am running out of synonyms for "underrated" when I talk about one of my favourite actors, Brendan Gleeson. He's stunningly effective in every thing he does (Calvary, In Bruges, Gangs of New York) and The Guard is no exception. He is absolutely brilliant in this film, which may exceed Calvary as his best work. In his very first scene, he witnesses a group of hoons fatally crash and rolls his eyes as if walking the ten or twenty metres is hugely inconvenient for him. He is unabashedly racist and offers no apology for it, in fact, he seems mildly confused when others take offence. But he is such a good guy at heart - he loves his mother and acts like a big gentle kid around her, and he is uncompromisingly moral. Doing the right thing is not hard morally, its the physical act of getting up and going that is the biggest challenge for him. All of the delightfully colourful costumes that Eimer Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh drapes on him (a floral dressing gown, a pimpish orange and brown suit, big red underpants or formal police blues) he wears like royal robes. John Michael McDonagh's script might not be as strong as his brother's for In Bruges, but its still got no shortage of pearls that Gleeson and co. can bite into. Sometimes the screenplay will dump something so unexpected on the audience that you can do nothing but laugh. Boyle is confronted by a drug smuggler and his biggest concern is the brain freeze he just gave himself. The plot is tight, with only a few loose ends (namely Katarina Cas' widow Gabriella) and the characters are all quirky and fun. Don Cheadle plays it pretty straight but works relatively well with Gleeson. Special mention should go to Mark Strong's Cornell, who always bemoans what its like to work in "their industry" and David Wilmot's O'Leary, who is firm in explaining that he's a sociopath not a psychopath, but doesn't actually know the difference. Liam Cunningham is an effective villain even if he doesn't do much and is completely incomprehensible when he speaks too fast.McDonagh makes good use of wide shots and in one particularly effective scene uses hand held camera to create unease. His direction is somewhat reminiscent of Tarantino, especially the crazy Western-style climax and the film's dynamic and often lively score. The Guard is a fine film to boast on your CV, and both McDonagh and Gleeson should be proud of it.

I had seen the poster and DVD cover for this British film many times, so I knew the leading Irish actor of the title, it had positive reviews by critics also, so I looked forward to trying it for myself. Basically Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Golden Globe nominated Brendan Gleeson) is an eccentric and unorthodox Irish police officer working for the Garda Síochána in a small town in Connemara, in the west of Ireland, confrontational personality, a subversive sense of humour, and a regular indulgence in prostitutes, drugs and alcohol, whilst on duty, but he does have a soft side as well, his mother Eileen (The Others' Fionnula Flanagan) is dying. Boyle has absolutely no interest in the international cocaine-smuggling and trafficking ring whatsoever, but that is what has brought American straitlaced and humourless FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) to Ireland, he is leading an investigation to catch a gang of dangerous drug traffickers attempting to pull of a high profit deal. This turns into a fish-out-of-water partnership between Boyle and Everett, due to a fellow officer of Boyle's disappearing, they team up to catch these criminals, with different approaches to getting the job done, Boyle is a maverick with no moral code, while Everett is more professional. Also starring Liam Cunningham as Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, David Wilmot as Liam O'Leary, Rory Keenan as Aidan McBride, Mark Strong as Clive Cornell, Dominique McElligott as Aoife O'Carroll, Sarah Greene as Sinead Mulligan and Katarina Cas as Gabriela McBride. Gleeson excels as the foul-mouthed anti-hero, Cheadle does well as the on-point FBI agent disrupting the easy life of the title character, this is essentially an alternative cop-buddy movie, it is definitely all about Gleeson's character, a dreadful policeman slowly showing deeper humanity, the investigation and action sequences are worthwhile as well, all in all it is a gritty and amusing comedy thriller. It was nominated the BAFTA for Best Original Screenplay. Very good!

To paraphrase The Guard's FBI Agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle), this movie is either really motherf****n' smart, or really motherf****n' dumb. Having laughed my way throughout the majority of it, my feet are firmly in the former camp, with Brendan Gleeson's towering performance and writer/director John Michael McDonagh's extremely witty script make this one of the most under-appreciated movies of 2011. It is, on the surface, a simple fish out of water story crossed with a mismatched buddy comedy. But with a self awareness that brings to mind Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), The Guard often feels like it's more intelligent than it's letting on, similar in many ways to it's morally shady protagonist.Gerry Boyle (Gleeson) is not your everyday Garda (Gaelic for 'policeman') . As he expressionlessly watches a car load of weed- toking yoofs crash and die, he helps himself to the insides of their pockets and finds some acid, which he promptly swallows without thinking twice. He cares about his terminally ill mother, so we know he's at least not all bad. His laid-back attitude to law enforcement is threatened by the arrival of the eager Aidan McBride (Rory Keenan) from Dublin, as well as a murder that may point to the work of an occult serial killer. There's also more drugs on the streets than ever before, but Gerry enjoys those almost as much as he enjoys his hookers.If the witty yet crass dialogue spouting from this grumpy collections of Irishmen sounds somewhat familiar, then this is probably because John Michael's brother Martin McDonagh penned and directed In Bruges (2008), which also starred Gleeson. In my opinion, The Guard is better and certainly funnier. Most of the humour stems from Gerry himself and the way he plays with the characters he interacts with as much as the audience themselves. With the news that international drug traffickers are heading to Connemara to make a multi-million (or billion, no-one seems to know) dollar deal, FBI Agent Everett arrives to brief the guard's on the situation. When the dealers appear on the projector as Liam Cunningham and Mark Strong, Gerry's response is "But I thought all drug-dealers were black?".It may seem somewhat bad taste humour, but the way Gleeson delivers his lines, and the reaction by Cheadle (who plays the straight-man extremely well), make for comedy gold. Gerry is everything Everett despises - bigoted, ignorant - but the loathing changes to curiosity as he witnesses Gerry do some good police work and appears to be the only one who cares. Is he putting on an act to catch people off- guard? Is he really an idiot with a natural instinct for detective work? Or is he a bit both? I can forgive it's formulaic shoot-out ending for suspicion that it may be mocking the type of films it's emulating. After all, this is a fish-out-of-water-story where the main character verbally acknowledges that he's in a fish-out-of- water story. I'm sticking with really motherf****n' smart.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

Directed and written by John Michael McDonagh, The Guard features unorthodox Irish small-town police Sergeant Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) doing battle with a learned crew of drug-runners with the help of bemused FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle).It takes a bit of concentration on the accents if you're not from the west of Ireland and the humour is a bit blunt at times. But as long as you don't take offence should you happen to be black, gay, American, English or from Dublin, you should enjoy this. You'll also need to be OK with a lot, and I mean a lot, of swearing, and a moderate number of shootings.I laughed out loud a few times particularly when Boyle says to Wendell 'these men are armed and dangerous, and you being an FBI agent you're more used to shooting at unarmed women and children'... Also, when Boyle suggests Wendell 'probably hadn't had this much fun since they burned all those kids up in Waco'.