I was bored earlier, so I checked out reviews of The Guard online to see how they compared with mine. Turns out, mine is almost identical to Peter Bradshaw's in the Guardian. And Kim Newman's in Empire. And Tim Robey and Jenny McCartney's in the Independent. And almost every other reviewer out there.
Apparently, there is only one way to review this film (even though the scores span three to five stars). It has to be positive (95% on RT, and the few negative reviews are actually just sitting on the fence and don't reach any real conclusion. One even has the line "I'm not really quite sure what to make of "The Guard". Americans.); there are a lot of similarities to In Bruges, only In Bruges is better; Brendan Gleeson is excellent; the Irish racism bit has to be mentioned. Cut, paste, file.
Why is it that at least 60% of every review (and I'm moving on from simply The Guard here) is just synopsis? People watch the trailer to get an idea of what it's about; the reviewers job is to assess it. I've read reviews where the entire thing is synopsis, with one line of appraisal thrown in at the end. Awful.
Tuesday 27 September 2011
Thursday 15 September 2011
The Guard: Review
Synopsis: A $500'000 (that's half a billion!) cocaine shipment is due to arrive somewhere near Galway in Ireland, bringing with it FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) and a gang of crims to disturb Gerry Boyle's (In Bruges' Brendan Gleeson) quiet life of being a rule-ignoring policeman.
When I write reviews I try and avoid trotting out the same key discussion points that most tend to flag up, but even though I go into writing this review having not read a single one, I can say with assurance that nearly all of them will mention its companion piece, In Bruges. The director of The Guard is Irishman John Michael McDonagh, brother of Martin McDonagh. Those who know me will know that In Bruges is my all-time favourite film, so I went into The Guard with expectations sky-high.
I'll get to whether it met said expectations shortly, but one thing I wasn't expecting is just how incredibly similar the two films are. Mimicking the directors, they could be siblings; outwardly different, but dig a little and they are comparable at nearly every level. Plotting and structure are the same; humour is pitched in a similar manner; both are bold, bright and gorgeous to look at; the main characters all have relatives across the celluloid divide; etc. etc. etc. Also, happily, in terms of quality they are comparable too, although In Bruges is still by far the superior film. If you like In Bruges, stop reading and just go and see it*.
One difference, however, is the centrality of the main character, Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson). The Guard revolves solely around him, whereas in In Bruges Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson take equal importance. Boyle is brilliant, he's vulgar, racist (in one great moment his racist attitudes are made easier to swallow when he voices assumption that all Irish people are racist, and it's therefore excusable. Boyle is as Irish as they come), hostile towards rules and regulations and he gleefully indulges his many vices; but he loves his ma, he allegedly came fourth in the 1500m freestyle at the Seoul Olympics (Wikipedia backs him up!) and has a well-buried moral compass. We're happy to root for him though, mostly because he's Brendan Gleeson and he's just so huggable. In short, he holds the film together, and does so excellently.
In Bruges' plotting follows the characters and wanders off to do some sightseeing of its own, only occasionally flitting back to the core narrative, and it's the same here. Much of the film is just spent mining the dynamic between Boyle and Everett for laughs. Unfortunately The Guard is always amusing but rarely hilarious, and it maintains the lighthearted tone even when it feels like it needs to be serious. Boyle for some reason just isn't phased whatsoever that he's about to go up against some armed drug-dealers, including the bad guy of the piece, a world-weary drug-smuggler (the ever-excellent Mark Strong). His determined defence of Ireland should feel heroic, but it's played for laughs and doesn't quite work. The firefight itself is similarly silly and is one of the more bizarrely unrealistic fights I've seen. That wouldn't be so bad if the rest of the film wasn't grounded in something approaching the real world; characters can shoot straight and act rationally, but right at the end that goes out the window, and it jars slightly.
That said, the positives far outweigh the negatives. The Guard is entertaining and has a crock o' gold heart, with a cast of real quality that carries it over the uneven patches. It'sIn Bruges' little brother, and that's no bad thing.
*Good fackin' luck! Retarded distribution means you'll have to dig pretty deep to find a showing. Harbour Lights only got it a good two weeks after it cropped up elsewhere.
When I write reviews I try and avoid trotting out the same key discussion points that most tend to flag up, but even though I go into writing this review having not read a single one, I can say with assurance that nearly all of them will mention its companion piece, In Bruges. The director of The Guard is Irishman John Michael McDonagh, brother of Martin McDonagh. Those who know me will know that In Bruges is my all-time favourite film, so I went into The Guard with expectations sky-high.
I'll get to whether it met said expectations shortly, but one thing I wasn't expecting is just how incredibly similar the two films are. Mimicking the directors, they could be siblings; outwardly different, but dig a little and they are comparable at nearly every level. Plotting and structure are the same; humour is pitched in a similar manner; both are bold, bright and gorgeous to look at; the main characters all have relatives across the celluloid divide; etc. etc. etc. Also, happily, in terms of quality they are comparable too, although In Bruges is still by far the superior film. If you like In Bruges, stop reading and just go and see it*.
One difference, however, is the centrality of the main character, Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson). The Guard revolves solely around him, whereas in In Bruges Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson take equal importance. Boyle is brilliant, he's vulgar, racist (in one great moment his racist attitudes are made easier to swallow when he voices assumption that all Irish people are racist, and it's therefore excusable. Boyle is as Irish as they come), hostile towards rules and regulations and he gleefully indulges his many vices; but he loves his ma, he allegedly came fourth in the 1500m freestyle at the Seoul Olympics (Wikipedia backs him up!) and has a well-buried moral compass. We're happy to root for him though, mostly because he's Brendan Gleeson and he's just so huggable. In short, he holds the film together, and does so excellently.
In Bruges' plotting follows the characters and wanders off to do some sightseeing of its own, only occasionally flitting back to the core narrative, and it's the same here. Much of the film is just spent mining the dynamic between Boyle and Everett for laughs. Unfortunately The Guard is always amusing but rarely hilarious, and it maintains the lighthearted tone even when it feels like it needs to be serious. Boyle for some reason just isn't phased whatsoever that he's about to go up against some armed drug-dealers, including the bad guy of the piece, a world-weary drug-smuggler (the ever-excellent Mark Strong). His determined defence of Ireland should feel heroic, but it's played for laughs and doesn't quite work. The firefight itself is similarly silly and is one of the more bizarrely unrealistic fights I've seen. That wouldn't be so bad if the rest of the film wasn't grounded in something approaching the real world; characters can shoot straight and act rationally, but right at the end that goes out the window, and it jars slightly.
That said, the positives far outweigh the negatives. The Guard is entertaining and has a crock o' gold heart, with a cast of real quality that carries it over the uneven patches. It'sIn Bruges' little brother, and that's no bad thing.
*Good fackin' luck! Retarded distribution means you'll have to dig pretty deep to find a showing. Harbour Lights only got it a good two weeks after it cropped up elsewhere.
Monday 12 September 2011
A Short Story
So begins a heartbreaking tale of unrequited love, broken promises and mistaken identity.
"Will you go out with me?"
"No"
"But you promised!"
"I thought you were someone else."
"Will you go out with me?"
"No"
"But you promised!"
"I thought you were someone else."
Fin
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