The Guard

"What a beautiful fuckin' day."

—Gerry Boyle, in the film's first spoken line

The Guard is a darkly comic 2011 Irish film. Starring Brendan Gleeson as Sergeant Gerry Boyle and Don Cheadle as FBI Agent Wendell Everett, it is based in the west of Ireland. When a murder victim turns up, Gerry soon discovers that he was part of a drug smuggling ring. When his rookie partner disappears, Gerry is asked by the man's wife to find out what happened. He then gets embroiled in the dealings of a drug smuggling ring and must crack the case.

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Tropes used in The Guard include:

• Affably Evil: all three of the drug traffickers are this to a certain extent
• Anti-Hero: Gerry is a type III.
• Apathetic Citizens: Wendell tries to get information on the villains by canvassing the locals. Nobody seems willing to help, speak English, or even acknowledge him. In desperation, he even asks a horse.
• Arc Number: Subverted. O'Leary scrawls the number 5 and a half on the the wall in blood at the murder scene after doing the deed. McBride suggests that it could be a serial killer. Turns out O'Leary was just mad drunk when he did it.

Aidan: Maybe it was his 5 1/2th victim? Maybe he killed 5 fellas and maimed another one?

• Armoured Closet Gay: Aidan.
• Bald of Evil: Clive Cornell. What do you expect from a villain played by Mark Strong?
• The Beard: Gabriella.
• Bittersweet Ending: The drug operation is definitively put down, but it is ambiguous as to whether Gerry survived the boat explosion. Though it is implied he has faked his death and moved on.
• Blackmail: Subverted. Sheehy attempts to blackmail Gerry with photographs of him in a threesome with some prostitutes to keep him from investigating the case further. Gerry simply doesn't care. After Sheehy leaves, Gerry facepalms in frustration. Turns out, he just has brain freeze from his milkshake.
• Blood Knight: Cornell is revealed to have a little bit of this: "You kidding me? This is better than fucking Christmas!"
• Book Ends: Gerry putting on his uniform.
• Bury Your Gays
• Casting Gag: As noted under Acceptable Targets Dubliners are mocked a lot, especially by Gerry. Brendan Gleeson is himself a Dubliner.
• Chekhov's Gun: When Gerry returns the bag of guns to the IRA, a Derringer, a Glock and a Kalashnikov are missing. Turns out, Gerry kept hold of them and keeps the Derringer in his trousers, which he uses to dispatch O'Leary. The other two guns are used in the final shootout.
• Chekhov's Skill: Gerry is seen playing a light gun game in the pub and is later seen out swimming. Both play major parts in the climax.
• Citizenship Marriage: Aidan is an Armored Closet Gay and Gabriella needs citizenship papers to stay in the country.
• Cluster F-Bomb
• Cool Old Lady: Gerry's mother.
• Corrupt Cop: Amazingly, Gerry is the only guard in the film not on the villains' payroll. They try to bribe and blackmail him, but he simply doesn't give a shit.
  • What makes this even funnier is that Gerry in other respects is probably the most corrupt police officer in his part of Ireland, what with his frequenting of prostitutes, taking of drugs (which in the first scene of the movie we see him stealing from a car accident), drinking on the job and giving a gun cache he finds back to the IRA
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass
• Cultured Badass: The villains like to spend car journeys discussing their favourite philosophers and have a fondness for Jazz music.
• Deadpan Snarker: Gerry Boyle. It is an Irish movie with the lead played by Brendan Gleeson after all. Wendell also gets in a few good quips
  • Clive also gets his share of lines: "When I signed up for the part of international drug runner, it didn't say anything about heavy lifting".
• Defiant to the End: McBride, cornered, refuses to turn around for the drug traffickers, deciding to show them for the cowards they are. They shoot him, then comment on how well he took it. "He was very philosophical about it."
• Da Chief: Inspector Stanton is a particularly incompetent version.
• Eagleland Osmosis: McBride speaks and acts much like an American cop. Boyle lampshades this.
• Evil Brit: Clive Cornell.
• Fetish: Invoked. Gerry has a thing for his prostitutes dressing as guards with ludicrously short skirts. He even asks them to bring handcuffs the next time.
• Hard Gay: The reason that the IRA have a Derringer in their weapon stash. Apparently, they were the only ones able to successfully infiltrate MI5.
• Heroic Neutral: Sums up Gerry to a tee. He just wants to enjoy his day off, and his taking on the drug traffickers is motivated partially by irritation that they killed his partner, partially because a drug trafficking case is just too much boring work
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Aoife sort of subverts this given that she is forced to participate in a blackmailing scheme against Gerry, but she seems to genuinely like Gerry.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: The drug smugglers suffer from this hugely in the film's climax. Cornell shoots at Boyle Guns Akimbo and one Mook fires Gangsta Style. Gerry takes a round to the arm and takes his time with his aim and takes out most of them.
• The Informant: The kid who turns up from time to time informs Gerry about the stash of guns. And tries to keep the Derringer for himself.
• Insistent Terminology: O'Leary isn't a psychopath, he's a sociopath. Though, he doesn't actually know what the difference is. He was simply told this in prison.
• Little Useless Gun: Averted by the derringer. Gerry kills O'Leary with it, though it takes him quite some time to die.
• Mistaken Nationality: Gabriella McBride is Croatian. Everybody thinks she's Romanian. Also, the first suspect in the murder case only looks Italian.
• Never Found the Body
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Gerry. Wendell lampshades this.
• One-Man Army: Gerry manages to kill most of the drug traffickers himself. However, he is clever enough to get Wendell to cover him from long range.
• One-Scene Wonder: Pat Shortt as IRA man Colum Hennessey.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Gerry says this about his shoulder wound.
• Pet the Dog: Gerry takes the time to look after his mother, who is dying of cancer.
• Psycho for Hire: O'Leary.
• Spiritual Successor: To In Bruges. Completely different movies, but they share the same off-the-wall and gleefully politically incorrect style of humour, as well as Brendan Gleeson in a prominent role. Direcor John Michael McDonagh is the brother of In Bruges director Martin McDonagh, who serves as an executive producer on The Guard.
• Turn in Your Badge: Hilariously subverted. Stanton tells Gerry he can consider himself under suspension for a variety of snarky remarks at a briefing. Gerry simply tells him that he won't in brazen fashion and then proceeds to tell him that one of the men he's looking for is already dead.
• Wicked Cultured: When we first meet the villains, they're quoting the philosophy of Nietzsche.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Aidan McBride. It gets him killed early on.
• Worthy Opponent: The drug traffickers respect Gerry's integrity. Of course, this means that they decide that he must die for it.