95% The Guard

All Critics (85) | Top Critics (25) | Fresh (81) | Rotten (4)

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.

"The Guard" is not the most original buddy-cop movie you'll see, but it well may be one of the most entertaining.

"The Guard" himself may be no angel, but his movie is a wee slice of heaven.

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

Gleeson is triumphant in this portrait of a complex man who is concurrently sensitive, boorish, brilliant, singular, and unforgettable.

Like bacon, Brendan Gleeson makes everything taste better.

The Guard, like its unconventional hero, is a true original.

Spiteful, ironic and human in turn, The Guard is an entertainment that makes most of the year's American comedies look impoverished, and in Gleeson it has a palpable star.

"The Guard" is violent, profane and funny.

The reasons it's worth seeing are Gleeson's impish performance and the sparkling dialogue, which marries Irish blarney to Tarantino-lite philiosophising.

There is something smug and roguish-by-rote about the usual Gleeson performance. Yet who else could play this protagonist?

The always-unbeatable Gleeson is on simply outstanding form, conjuring a character both dignified and ridiculous, heroic and hardly bothered.

Assured and well-written, it may totter uncertainly in the third act but it's a pleasure to listen to a script with such an ear for shocking insult and knowing offence.

Offering shades of Sidney Poitier's In The Heat of the Night, The Guard is a good character study with an above average script.

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

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