Defending The Guard

Clearly, one man’s meat is another man’s poison. A recent letter-writer walked out of the film The Guard and complained that your reviewer, Josef Woodard, had recommended this film too highly. In defense of the reviewer, I would like to point out that, had the viewer stayed longer, the point of the story would have been revealed, namely that the protagonist, a world-weary and cynical police officer, was in fact an extremely shrewd and warm-hearted individual with an interesting back story of his own who ultimately proved smarter than his FBI partner and solved the crime. Brendan Gleeson’ s performance in this role was masterful, and the serious plot was leavened with insightful humor. The dialog was at times crude, but no more so than in many current movies (and your review carries the warning, “pervasive language”). It reflected the character and milieu perfectly. Ironically enough, I also rarely walk out of a movie, but recently a friend and I did just when we saw Pointblank, a French-Australian hybrid that showed briefly here and proved exhaustingly intense and pointless in our opinion. So to each his own.