The Guard is an independent Irish movie about Boyle (Gleeson), a local sergeant in the law-enforcing Garda who stumbles upon a violent murder in a sleepy town in Ireland, and Wendell (Cheadle), an FBI agent tracking down drug-runners with a cocaine supply worth $500m. They discover the two events are interconnected and must team up to take down the baddies, one of whom (Strong) has become nostalgic for the days where his occupation was a difficult and dangerous endeavor.
The movie is a fish-out-of-water tale combined with odd couple dynamics within a black comedy atmosphere. Usually when I throw in multiple genres, I describe movies that fail to satisfy on many (if not all) fronts. Here, it is a bit different because the movie aspires to none of those individual formats and instead hopes to just be true to itself. It succeeds. It doesn't feel like a clone or a Frankenstein, but a wholly and completely fresh world.
The plot is fairly basic without any real intrigue or suspense, but that is not why you watch the movie. The cinematography contains that quirky indie obsession with transforming the ordinary into the beautiful (sometimes successfully, sometimes not), but that is not why you watch the movie. You watch because of the people. It relies on its characterizations, which are a strange combination of stereotype, archetype, and oddball fascination. They're certainly different, but I don't think they offer anything truly arresting as far as character studies go. The thick accents add a little Fargo-esque humor but also make the dialogue difficult to understand. Honestly, it's a solid, off-the-wall black comedy that sits alone in its indie corner, and wouldn't be too upset if nobody else liked it as much as it likes itself.
IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1540133/