After breaking the box offices in Ireland and doing kind of ok over here - 'The Guard' finally found its way into my home entertainment system a few weeks back. I had intended to go and see it at the cinema last year, but the usual combination of idiotic multiplex operators and having no spare time at the weekend foiled me.'The Guard' is one of the most Irish films I have ever seen. Starring Bendon Gleeson as country bumpkin Gallway police officer Gerry Boyle, it plays with the stereotypes of that nation and has a lot of fun in the process. Boyle is an officer who seems to have made a career out of appearing to be an idiot while in fact being incredibly street smart. When the world-wise Wendell Everet (Don Cheadle) arrives in town as part of an FBI drugs bust, he is suddenly out of his depth in this foreign land where a veil of apparent simplicity covers a deeply complex culture. After all, this is a place where people can pretend they don't speak English to stone-wall an outsider, you can still get guns off the IRA and where a 10 year old boy knows about the Birmingham 6.
Everet and Boyle are compelled to join forces on a darkly comic investigation into the Irish drugs underworld. Boyle appears like a simpleton throughout the film, when he first meets Everet he asks him all manner of horribly naively racist questions. Of course he is merely teasing the American: "I'm Irish; sure racism's part of my culture" he says mockingly. Eventually Everet comes realise that Boyle is a man who understands much more than his outward manner would reveal - knowing when to act and when to take a day off. The central theme of the film revolves around whether Boyle is in fact a bullshitter or disarmingly clever police officer, and by the end it's left open for you the audience to decide.
When 'The Guard' finished I uttered a single word - "Perfect". With a couple of weeks of reflection I think that's over-stating the matter, but 'The Guard' remains a wonderfully simple, funny and affecting film.
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