What Do The Critics Say?

"Liam Cunningham and Mark Strong are excellent as philosophical gang members who indulge in protracted discussions on morality, with the latter at one point ranting about the use of Americanisms in dialogue. Gleeson's performance is delightful, and his interactions with Cheadle and Cunningham, in particular, take full advantage of the quick-witted script. Endlessly quotable and hysterically funny." Emmet O'Cuana FILMINK "A comedy about a small-town Irish cop and a straight-arrow African-American FBI Agent, The Guard sounds like a cliché wrapped in a chestnut inside a couple of stereotypes. These movies write themselves, don’t they? Fortunately, The Guard has a real author, John Michael McDonagh. A terrific showcase for veteran pug-faced character actor Brendan Gleeson as the titular hero, Gerry Boyle. Bloody, funny, drug-busting buddies." Liam Lacey GLOBE & MAIL "An Irish black comedy about an eccentric local cop who teams up with a hidebound American FBI agent in an effort to bring down murderous drug runners. Crisp, acid-tongued and sharply acted, it’s the sort of exercise in tangy Celtic cynicism that’s become one of the Emerald Isle’s most reliable imports. But it’s all in good fun. Smart. Definitely, definitely smart." Amy Biancolli HOUSTON CHRONICLE "It's the cumulative dry humour with black overtones and appealing odd couple pairing of Gleeson and Don Cheadle that make this offbeat Irish comedy highly appealing. The 'fish out of water' element is seamlessly integrated into what is essentially a story about an unconventional Irish policeman who plays everything by his own rules. The dialogue is at times hilarious and the context gives it additional punch. It is Gleeson who steals the film with a brilliantly judged performance." Louise Keller URBAN CINEFILE

"There are few things finer in cinema than Brendan Gleeson's fat, happy face. With just the slightest inflection, he can make that marvelous mug intimidating, inquisitive, joking, pressing, disgusted, bemused or wise. His options seem endless, his range near limitless. Gleeson brings the whole spectrum to "The Guard," a cheeky look at corrupt cops and the drug smugglers who feed them bribes. Written and directed with fine spirit by John Michael McDonagh." Tom Long DETROIT NEWS "Brendan Gleeson is a blooming marvel. Consigned to the most unlikeable of roles and dodgiest of scripts, usually playing some variant of a gangster, rogue or schemer, the Irish charmer almost always manages to bust out and win us over. His latest magic act is The Guard, a pot that would otherwise boil over, were it not for Gleeson’s anchoring and highly amusing presence. If a sequel could somehow be conjured to reunite this pair, we’d have definite cause to raise a glass of Guinness to the idea." Peter Howell TORONTO STAR "Irish police sergeant Gerry Boyle may be 'the last of the independents.' But this boozy, bluff and blunt redhead sure is a hard man t'love. Soars along on a script, like those by the other McDonagh (Martin wrote and directed "In Bruges" and the Oscar winning short "Six Shooter", both starring Gleeson) built out of verbal flourishes and Irish curses. A laugh out loud comedy as hard as "The French Connection," a modern spaghetti Western on the windswept wastes of Ireland." Roger Moore ORLANDO SENTINEL "Gleeson is thoroughly engaging as the foul mouthed, world weary cop who is so laid back he could be mistaken for disinterested. There is a wonderful sense of Irish eccentricity to Boyle, and his contradictory characteristics just make him seem absolutely real, from his loving relationship with his mum (Fionnulla Flanagan) to his lively taste for hookers. Don Cheadle is a marvellous idea, contrasting in every way with Gleeson's Gerry Boyle, as the neat, formal FBI man Wendell Everett. Mark Strong, Liam Cunningham and David Wilmot are outstanding as the drug smugglers." Andrew L Urban URBAN CINEFILE

The Inside Story Ten years ago, John Michael McDonagh wrote and directed his first film, a short entitled "The Second Death", introducing, in a minor role, a young policeman named Gerry, played by Gary Lydon (Inspector Stanton in "The Guard"). "He’s a funny character: he deliberately does stuff to unnerve people," says McDonagh. "I always thought I’d like to do something with him at some point." A couple of years later he started writing another short film featuring the same character, setting it aside while he undertook some other work, including his award-nominated screenplay for Working Title’s first Australian project, "Ned Kelly", starring the late Heath Ledger. After completing his work on "Ned Kelly", McDonagh was writing a variety of scripts, ranging from big-budget projects that he would sell for other directors to bring to the screen, to sub-$10m movies that he felt he could direct himself. He was determined that, if he wasn’t able to complete these smaller projects personally, then they would not be made and, when a feature film which he had intended to direct failed to materialise, he decided to look again at the incomplete draft screenplay of his short film. Those ten pages became the scene where Gerry Boyle examines the dead man in the cottage at the beginning of "The Guard". "That scene was the core of it, so we moved on from there. Then it was basically bang, bang, bang. I wasn’t writing it in order, but I had an idea and I put that at the end of the script. I thought 'now we’ve got to get to there', so I was just slotting stuff in. Usually, when you are doing that, you have to go back over it and say 'that doesn’t make sense in relation to this', but that didn’t happen. It all sort of flowed. So, I would write and just look at what I had written and then it was '‘OK, keep going, keep going' and in thirteen days of actual work over three weeks it was done." McDonagh and his colleagues at Reprisal Films, Chris Clark ("Thunderbirds") and Flora Fernandez-Marengo ("Patagonia"), who had produced his short "The Second Death", teamed up with Ed Guiney ("The Magdalene Sisters") and Andrew Lowe ("Five Minutes of Heaven") of the premier Irish independent film and television company Element Pictures and pre-production and casting began. "When Flora sent the script to us, it was pretty much fully-formed, which is very unusual," Lowe recalls. "John’s a remarkable writer and my first reaction was that it was hilarious. I loved the dark humour in it." Guiney agrees: "It was one of those scripts that’s damn near perfect and when you get them, they’re gold dust." Script in hand, all of the producers were surprised at the speed with which the production then came together. "I first read it in the middle of January," says Clark, "and we were shooting the film by the middle to end of October. In my experience that’s pretty rare!" McDonagh revealed "The Guard" was "written and shot within the space of twelve months, so although you could say that I’ve been sitting on this character for ten years, it was just percolating in my mind. It’s great to be able to write a character who will do or say anything. You just think 'what’s the worst thing someone could say in this situation?' and he just keeps going. I think he is at the end of his tether and is willing to say anything at any moment. That’s the point I had got to in the film business. I was so pissed off and angry that all of that stuff came out in a sublimated way. So, if you’re wondering if I have ever met a policeman like Gerry Boyle, I am Gerry Boyle!" So, was the lead role written for Brendan Gleeson? Not according to McDonagh. "I didn’t write it for Brendan Gleeson. It became quite clear that if Brendan had turned it down, it could have all ground to a halt." "If it were a younger actor, there wouldn’t be that sense of melancholy and it became quite clear that if Brendan had turned it down, it could have all ground to a halt," McDonagh explained. But Gleeson, who had had a huge success with "In Bruges" (directed by John’s brother Martin McDonagh), read the script and accepted very quickly. "It was the writing," the Dublin born Gleeson admits, "and the fantastic part. Anybody who didn’t take that part should lock himself into a small room and shoot himself. Obviously it’s hilariously funny, but there’s also something that’s really interesting about the humanity of this guy and his quest to re-calibrate the notion that heroism is possible, or the notion that facing down greater odds is possible and that he would be up to it when it comes to it. It’s very like an old Western in that way." Three time Black Reel Award winner Don Cheadle, who was McDonagh’s first choice for the role of the FBI agent, was immediately impressed by the quality of the screenplay. "It’s really rare that you see a script that’s as fully realized as this one and a story that’s so complete. These characters are all so full and rich. It came to our attention and I knew that John had Brendan interested in doing it and I love Brendan as an actor. Seeing a project that is at this stage and it doesn’t yet have a home, we, my partners and my company, really wanted to jump in, to see if we could help get it made." Cheadle, who appeared opposite Denzel Washington in "Devil in a Blue Dress", joined the film both as co-star and executive producer. "From that point on," Clark recalls, "it gave us the opportunity to go to Cannes with a script, with a director and with two great leads and then, when we realized that the finance was coming towards this project, we were able to start casting the other roles. We could not have been luckier." Of the drug-smuggling villains, the busy and versatile Mark Strong ("Stardust") was suggested to McDonagh by casting director Jina Jay ("The Lovely Bones"), while Liam Cunningham and David Wilmot had both worked with the director before and he had written their characters with them specifically in mind. Cunningham fondly characterizes McDonagh’s writing style as "poetic madness on a page." Stage actor and voice artist Rory Keenan (who played Anthony Lowry in "Intermission"), a Trinity College drama graduate, who had recently appeared in John Carney’s "Zonad" for Element Pictures, joined the cast as the young and overenthusiastic Garda Aidan McBride, who arrives from Dublin to find things very different on the wild west coast. 2007 Irish Film and Television Award winner Fionnula Flanagan ("Transamerica") has worked with such diverse directing talents as Robert Zemeckis, Ricky Gervais and Anthony Hopkins. One of Ireland’s most distinguished actresses, she is perfectly suited to the role of Gerry's spirited, though bravely moribund mother, Eileen Boyle. Dominique McElligott, fresh from co-starring as Sam Rockwell’s wife Tess Bell in Duncan Jones's acclaimed "Moon", hooks up with Sarah Greene ("My Brothers") as a pair of vivacious Dublin prostitutes (Aoife O'Carroll & Sinead Mulligan respectively) hired by Sgt Boyle for an afternoon of fun in Galway. Top Irish comedian and 2008 Irish Film and Television Award winning actor Pat Shortt ("Garage") was cast as the IRA armourer, Hennessy, in a single, colourful scene. Making her international film debut is Slovenian actress, model and TV personality Katarina Cas ("Reality"). "She came out of nowhere, really," says McDonagh. "And she’s now having great difficulty convincing people back home that she’s been playing the female lead in an English-language movie with Brendan Gleeson!" John Michael McDonagh’s affinity with his cast is a key element in his success as a director. "“He’s a strong character, with strong views. He’s very visual and he has a very strong sense about what he wants to do visually, but he is able to strike up a special relationship with the actor he is working with," states Clark ("Johnny English Reborn"). "And from that comes a brilliant communication about what that character is supposed to be doing in that specific scene, but also in a bigger way about who the character is. The result, as you can see in this film, is strong characters and that is real talent." According to Lowe, McDonagh had equally strong ideas about the crew he wanted to work with. "He was very clear that he wanted us to get the best people we could find. A lot of first-time directors want to work with all of their friends from film school, but he was smart enough to want to surround himself with people who knew more about their particular area than the director did." The department heads were all new to McDonagh, although he was familiar with their work. "I was looking forward to working with cinematographer Larry Smith, as he had done "Eyes Wide Shut" and "Bronson", so he’d done both a big-budget and a mini-budget movie. Usually those sorts of Director of Photography either do one or the other: they don’t go back and forth once they become well-known. I got on very well with him; he’s a Londoner, too. A lot of D.O.P's don’t like storyboards, I don’t know why. It was my first movie and everything had to be storyboarded, but Larry was fine with it and we went through everything and we had a great relationship. I think the film looks great." The music McDonagh had in mind was as stylized as the rest of the film’s design and he found it in the music of an indie band from Tucson, Arizona. "I picked Calexico, because I didn’t want tiddly-i-di Irish music, I wanted it Ennio Morricone-style. I was listening to a couple of their albums and every so often a song would come along, or an instrumental and I’d think, that’s very cinematic. How could I get them? And then I’d say to myself, no, they won’t do it. But I asked and they came back to me and wanted to see the script. They told me they loved it and I said I’d like to ask them to 'do' Morricone for it and they agreed." "We had a fairly clear-cut ambition as far as finding the locations was concerned," Guiney ("Garage") says, "because John had written about a part of the world he knows incredibly well and it was all laid out in the script." The locations were very familiar to McDonagh, whose parents moved back from London to live in Spiddal, County Galway, which he visits several times a year. "The locations were in my mind when I was writing it. Sometimes you get an approximation of what you want, but sometimes you actually get the exact place." They ranged from the edgy glamour of the G Hotel in Galway, where Boyle entertains his 'hoors', to the lonely beauty of the coastline and open moorland. Despite some of the wettest weather of recent times, the production managed to dodge the worst of it and complete principal photography on schedule. Strong remembers trying to do a particularly dramatic scene in some even more dramatic weather. "We couldn’t finish it. We were out in the middle of nowhere and I’d never seen horizontal rain before!" "The pier sequence was the one part of the film we didn’t shoot in the specific location for which it was written," Guiney revealed. The production moved to Wicklow for this spectacular set-piece, but there was no escaping the weather. What's It All About?

Sergeant Gerry Boyle is a small-town cop with a confrontational personality, a subversive sense of humour, a dying mother, a fondness for prostitutes, and absolutely no interest whatsoever in the international cocaine-smuggling ring that has brought FBI agent Wendell Everett to his door. Despite the fact that Boyle seems more interested in mocking and undermining Everett than in actively working to solve the case, Boyle finds that circumstances keep pulling him back into the thick of it. First his tiresomely enthusiastic and new partner disappears. Then his favourite hooker attempts to blackmail him into turning a blind eye. Finally the drug-traffickers try to buy him off as they have every other member of the local police force. These events unwittingly offend Boyle's murky moral code. Now he needs to take matters into his own hands, and the scene is set for an explosive showdown.

The Verdict "With its spaghetti western soundtrack and it's wild west coast setting, "The Guard" is a 'modern day' western. A visually-stylised, poetic, widescreen film, with a mythic resonance and a darkly comic sense of humour, in the classical tradition of John Ford and Preston Sturges. Debut director John Michael McDonagh used as a template, those exciting and original films produced in U.S. cinema in the Seventies. Films that had a melancholy undertow to them and what is now, a quickly fading quality. The Wild West in "The Guard" is the West of Ireland (Connemara), where an isolated frontier town has for its lawman, an eccentric individual with a dying mother, a fondness for prostitutes, and a heightened sense of the absurd. The lawman, Garda Sergeant, Gerry Boyle, played by 1999 & 2010 Irish Film and Television Award winner Brendan Gleeson is a feckin gem. Boyle's uncomplicated life as a policeman is interrupted by the arrival of his new Garda sidekick, Aidan McBride, and the murder of a local lad. Boyle gives the impression these events are an unwelcome, feckin inconvenience requiring the one thing he would like to avoid at all cost: actual police work. Played superbly by Gleeson, Boyle quickly grows on you. Beneath that somewhat gruff, complicated exterior, there's a savvy policeman: as we soon find out. FBI agent Wendell Everett is, to all intents and purposes, everything Sargean Boyle should be. Played by two time Oscar nominee Don Cheadle, Everett is the perfect straight guy in a deliciously dark comedy act. Not unexpectedly, even the crooks in "The Guard" add their share of humour too. "The Guard" isn't all comedy. The action in the final act, with its 'Laurel and Hardy' nod, rounds out what most will find is a very, feckin entertaining film. 4 1/2 STARS." Who Is Playing Who?

Brendan Gleeson Don Cheadle Liam Cunningham David Wilmot Rory Keenan Mark Strong Fionnula Flanagan Katarina Cas Dominique McElligott Sarah Greene Pat Shortt Darren Healy Laurence Kinlan Gary Lydon Dermot Healy Dominick Hewitt Sharon Kearney Michael Og Lane

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Sergeant Gerry Boyle FBI agent Wendell Everett Francis Sheehy Liam O'Leary Garda Aidan McBride Clive Cornell Eileen Boyle Gabriela McBride Aoife O'Carroll Sinead Mulligan Colum Hennessey Jimmy Moody Photographer Garda Inspector Gerry Stanton Old Farmer Henchman SWoman at Bartley's House Eugene Moloney

The Production Team Directed by John Michael McDonagh Screenplay by John Michael McDonagh Produced by Chris Clark/Flora Fernandez-Marengo/Ed Guiney/Andrew Lowe Original Music by Calexico Cinematography by Larry Smith Film Editing by Chris Gill Casting by Jina Jay Production Design by John Paul Kelly Art Direction by Lucy van Lonkhuyzen Costume Design by Eimer Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh Run Time 96 minutes Rated MA15+ [AUST] Copyright ©2011 - Transmission Films - All Rights Reserved ©1999-2011 - The Movie Pages & Impact Internet Services - All Rights Reserved. Protected by Australian & International Copyright, Trademark Laws & Intellectual Property Rights.