The Guard

Guard (DVD) (Eng/Dol Dig 5.1/2.35)

THE GUARD is a comedic fish-out-of-water tale of murder, blackmail, drug trafficking and rural police corruption. Two policemen must join forces to take on an international drug-smuggling gang -- one, an unorthodox Irish policeman and the other, a straitlaced FBI agent. Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleason) is an eccentric small-town cop with a confrontational and crass personality and a subversive sense of humor. A longtime policeman in County Galway, Boyle is a maverick with his own moral code. He has seen enough of the world to know there isn't much to it and has had plenty of time to think about it. When a fellow police officer disappears and Boyle's small town becomes key to a large drug trafficking investigation, he is forced to at least feign interest when dealing with the humorless FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) assigned to the case. Left to run his territory to his liking for many years, he is not at all impressed when the FBI comes to town. Everett looks down on Boyle as a low-level provincial policeman with a limited and flippant view of the world; Boyle sees Everett as a by-the-book policeman with a chip on his shoulder and no understanding of how the real world runs. Despite the fact that Boyle seems more interested in mocking and undermining Everett than in actively working to solve the case, Boyle finds that circumstances keep pulling him back into the thick of it. As unconventional as Boyle is, these events unwittingly offend his murky moral code. He realizes that he needs to take matters into his own hands, and that Everett is the only person he can trust. And so the scene is set for an unlikely friendship and explosive finale.