The Guard

This delightfully vulgar, Celtic twist on In The Heat of the Night, is the first feature directed by John Michael McDonagh and has much of the same cynical humor, love of language and preoccupation with violence as his younger brother Martin’s work.  While The Guard is a tad more modest than Martin McDonagh’s 2008 début In Bruges, it is also wee bit more fun, and is far superior to the much-lauded big-cop-in-a-small-town-comedy Hot Fuzz from 2006.

Brandon Gleason is a gas as an old, fat, confrontational Irish cop who doesn’t give a fuck and enjoys taking the piss out of visiting American FBI agent Don Cheadle.  The best thing about the film is that, while it works well as humorous genre deconstruction, its characters and plot are strong enough to sustain the full duration of the film right up through a very satisfying climax, where many films like this fall apart.