GUARDS!!

"The Guard" is a film I've been wanting to see for a while now; as stated before I'm a fan of shows and movies featuring the emergency services, seeing how "Hot Fuzz" worked I was eager to watch "The Guard" and while I didn't expect the most exciting and action packed movie I still thought this would be a good laugh since everyone has been raving about it and praising it.

And I have to say...I found it pretty underwhelming.

Granted, some of the characters were enjoyable; my personal favorite was Sergeant Boyle, played by Brendan Gleeson, he was the definitive old policeman who does things the "old way", who may be an arse on the outside but deep down he's a good man.

I also found the FBI agent enjoyable, simply his reactions to this new environment were quite funny at times, him and the sergeant aren't exactly close and don't see eye to eye, this can work well but in my opinion it's one of the film's downfalls, they don't spend enough time together to get a friendship or mutual respect going, there doesn't feel like enough chemistry between the two or playing off each other for the relationship to work.
It may just be the style of comedy that I'm not a fan of, most of the jokes revolve around the FBI agent being black and American, not fitting in with his new surroundings, this joke can work and it made for some funny moments but it felt like that was the only joke they had and they overused it a bit too much for me. Then there's the swearing and there's quite a bit of it. I'm okay with swearing in films if it's necessary and here I felt it was a bit too over done, it would make sense if just one character swore a lot as it would aid their characterisation but instead most of the characters have potty mouths, it just feels unnecessary.

Now to be fair the film isn't terrible and it's not even that bad, it just didn't click with me as it did for a lot of other people, still people enjoy it and they're welcome to, again it's probably just my taste in comedy. Then again this is more of a serious black comedy than a laugh out loud flick, so maybe I just had my expectations set for the wrong sort of movie.