The Guard.

Saturday gone I watched the Guard. I love going to the pictures, but I'm a bit of a fussbag when I do go, it has to be said. I don't get in like dead early, but early enough to catch the 'coming soons' and get a good seat - which at this place is the small back row consisting of just four. So it does get on my tits when despite an ocean of seats around me someone comes in and plonks themselves in the seat directly next to me, not leaving that one in between us empty, but next to me. Knowing it'll be dark in a minute or two it makes me feel ever so uneasy, so off to the row in front I go.
Also, why do folk laugh at adverts really over enthusiastically? adverts you and I see on the normal telly every night. Adverts that are not funny. Anyway rant over, if I was to mention the old biddies who came in five minutes into the film and treated it like a cafe rather than a cinema you'd probably think I was a right miserable old cunt. So I won't. So, yeah, I watched the Guard on Saturday, enjoyed it.
The Irish do independent cinema pretty well, by that I don't mean the Commitments, I mean stuff like Intermission (2003), I went Down (1997), The Butcher Boy (1997) and The Van (1996) . The Guard stars Brendan Gleeson the Emerald Isle's answer to Bobby De Niro as the small town old fashioned police Sergeant Gerry Boyle, an oafish supposedly dumb copper with a penchant for booze, confiscated drugs and the odd whore on his day off, a character who's been likened to the Big Lebowski's Dude because of his carefree/careless attitude and as anti-hero as Cage's Bad Lieutenant.
The influx of a huge drugs smuggle fronted by the Irish Jimmy Corkhill (Liam Cunnigham) through the normally quiet town of Connemara sees the arrival of the FBI spearheaded by Don Cheadle who's take-no-shit Agent Wendell Everett clashes with Boyle and his perhaps rather ridiculous old fashioned attitude from the off, but as the coke deal cracks on the two opposites form an unlikely partnership in order to combat it leading to an eventual action packed climax. Hilarious in parts and filled with great one liners, part Father Ted, part Lethal Weapon the film jumps across genres and cleverly leads up to and then quickly away from the predictable usual cop drama, perhaps Boyle isn't as dumb as he first appears.