Storyline
Two policemen must join forces to take on an international drug- smuggling gang - one, an unorthodox Irish policeman and the other, a straitlaced FBI agent. Sergeant Gerry Boyle is an eccentric small-town cop with a confrontational and crass personality and a subversive sense of humor. A longtime policeman in County Galway, Boyle is a maverick with his own moral code. He has seen enough of the world to know there isn't much to it and has had plenty of time to think about it. When a fellow police officer disappears and Boyle's small town becomes key to a large drug trafficking investigation, he is forced to at least feign interest when dealing with the humorless FBI agent Wendell Everett assigned to the case.
Directors
Cast
Trailer
Reviews
80
Boxoffice Magazine
The Guard may be a formula movie but McDonagh does wonders with the familiar character types and action climax.
80
A crusty jewel of a performance by Brendan Gleeson goes a long way toward enlivening an otherwise routine tale of murder, blackmail, drug trafficking and rural police corruption in The Guard.
80
In narrative terms, it's mostly an excuse to work in a trio of crooks whose banter may be even better than that of our hero; Mark Strong's disgusted rant about paying off policemen and Liam Cunningham – led musings on Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billie Joe" are enough to justify the entire movie on their own.
75
Slant Magazine
The Guard is John Michael McDonagh's caustically funny riff on cop and crime films.
75
Only Boyle's unstoppable tendency to mouth off sustains the routine plot, but McDonagh pushes the limits of what he can make Gleeson say without making the crude nature of his asides overwhelm their comic potential.
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