96% The Guard

All Critics (97) | Top Critics (27) | Fresh (93) | Rotten (4)

Although The Guard is primarily a language romp, it's also a terrific showcase for veteran pug-faced character actor Brendan Gleeson.

Brendan Gleeson is a blooming marvel.

A laugh-out-loud comedy as hard as "The French Connection," a modern spaghetti Western on the windswept wastes of Ireland.

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.

There are few things finer in cinema than Brendan Gleeson's fat, happy face.

McDonagh's script is agile, darting between the ridiculous, the sage and the surprisingly sentimental. His love of language and the absurd has hints of the wisecracking Quentin Tarantino. But the story is decidedly more rooted in Ireland's loamy turf.

If you like your cops and robbers stories laced with Irish humour, you'll want to see The Guard, a film that blends crime and blarney in equal measure.

The film is foul-mouthed and not without its flourishes of violence but it's irresistibly likeable (and unpredictable).

Boyle is probably the first screen hero in a long time whose heroism comes out of boredom and ennui. He gives nihilism a good name.

Augmenting a smart, witty screenplay is magnificent Scope camerawork by Larry Smith, using beautiful locations around the west coast of Ireland.

A shifty, cunning and gloriously off-kilter affair.

It's a good thing the two main characters are played by actors who can make these shifts in tone work otherwise this could have been one big mess

Driven by pitch-perfect performances and a darkly humoured script, this ends up an hysterically funny and immensely enjoyable romp.

Delightfully dark, The Guard is the latest buddy comedy classic, and a must-see for fans of Hot Fuzz and In Bruges.

The film falters when it gets into the somber philosophising that was done so much better in [Martin McDonough's] In Bruges. Still, that movie was primarily a drama, and this one is absolutely a comedy. One of the funniest of the year, no question.

Gleeson is perhaps the only true reason to sit through The Guard, a satisfactory yet oddly monotonous police adventure in dire need of the actor's perfectly timed delivery.

The Guard is certainly good for a laugh or two, but those that are claiming it to be funnier than In Bruges are claiming things that aren't true.

Gleeson's Boyle constantly wrong-foots those around him. He has no time for political correctness, yet it's his mealy-mouthed PC-Plod colleagues who are the real racists ... McDonagh's film shares his jaunty irreverance.

Great fun when taken in the right spirit, which would be Old Paddy with a Guinness chaser.

We are never in doubt that it's a comedy, but there are some fairly serious matters and a surprising amount of dramatic action

It is the characterisations and their actions that catch us off guard in this nicely written and played film whose genres blend as comfortably as the characters

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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_guard_2011/

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