Tales of police corruption in cinema are a dime a dozen. Some are akin to Serpico. Others are like Brooklyn’s Finest. Then there’s The Guard, which resembles neither, but has been drastically overlooked in 2011. Don Cheadle and Brendan Gleeson star in this Irish comedy that follows unorthodox policeman Gerry Boyle (Gleeson) as he investigates a few random murders and their possible connection to a five-hundred million – or more notably “half a billion” – dollar drug smuggling operation.
His foil throughout is FBI special agent Wendell Everett (Cheadle), a rather jaded, uptight, by-the-book man who expects to be ostracized because of his race – and her certainly is. Ostensibly, this movie looks to be a European incarnation of 48 Hours, but this presumption fades as the film begins to focus more on the endemic corruption within the Irish police force. To be fair, there are gradations of corruption, ranging from Boyle’s solicitation of prostitutes to his lifting a hit of ecstasy from the jacket pocket of a lad recently killed in a drunk-driving accident, or even his groping of a recently murdered man’s crotch to elicit a laugh from Aidan McBride, his newly acquired, soon to be murdered partner. (In Boyle’s defense, the man was a drug smuggling murderer.)
Boyle is unconventional, crude (“why don’t you fuck off to America with your appropriate, fuckin’ Obama”) and kind of an ass, but his character flaws don’t necessarily seem to interfere with his police work. He’s not a super cop, but finds what he’s looking for, even if in a rather strange, eccentric way, something that prompts Everett to condescendingly wonder if Boyle is “really mothefuckin’ dumb or really motherfuckin’ smart.”
The forced pairing of Everett and Boyle opens the door to a slew of racial epithets and stereotypes: “I didn’t think blacks could ski – or is that swim?” asks Boyle when Everett explains that he had a rather “privileged” upbringing. But raunch is not the ethos here; rather, the thematic focus is on differences. Sure, race is an easy target, but The Guard goes a bit deeper and explores the issues that Ireland and the United States respectively consider important, most notably our “war on drugs.”
There are hundreds of pages that could be written on this war’s futility. To its credit, The Guard shies away from openly decrying our policies and, instead, juxtaposes Everett’s fervor to catch these smugglers with brief shots of a child laughing at Boyle’s comments about the IRA “killing little Protestant children.” Here, the audience should gasp an uncomfortable chuckle, not because the young boy laughs at something vulgar, but because he is conscientiously agreeing as he laughs at something vulgar. His world is ripe with conflict, and he knows all too well the threats of the IRA and the conflicts between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland. This is something we can read about, but there’s no true comparison within our borders. Certainly, this film is not a “be thankful for what you’ve got allegory,” but it offers a bit of an explanation as to why Boyle is still employed and why he’s not as gung-ho on finding these smugglers because of their connection to cocaine as he is about punishing them for murdering his partner.
At the same time, The Guard’s mission is not to mock America—at least, not all the time. Everett might be uptight, but he’s not a stooge or a fool. Rather, his uptight persona and straight-laced demeanor, which seem to stem from his exposure to prejudice and bigotry while growing up, suggest a continuing struggle against racism in the States as well as mirror the conflict between religious groups in Boyle’s Ireland. McDonagh doesn’t expose this with a pedestrian, heartfelt conversation. Rather, we see the disparity between progresses made in both countries. Racism is certainly alive and well in America, but, in general – or, at least, for Everett — the fight has transitioned from violence to a competition for success. He’s an upper echelon FBI agent with a few famous collars, and while this doesn’t eliminate racism, it allows him to transcend the stereotype. In Ireland, it seems, there is no defecting from a battle that has been raging for quite a few decades, and the laughing child suggests that it won’t die out entirely any time soon. While this isn’t a terrible harbinger for the fate of Ireland, it is The Guard’s way of suggesting that our “war on drugs” may not be at the top of the global “to-do list.”
All in all, the story is intelligent, clever, and successfully avoids being heavy-handed and metaphor riddled. Gleeson is mordantly hilarious without veering to slapstick silliness, and, characteristically (with the exception of the aforementioned Brooklyn’s Finest), Cheadle is impressive. He chooses his roles wisely, and, no matter what they are, he delivers.
