The Guard with Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle is the offering created by John McDonagh and it’s clear to see the family humour is genetic as his brother made the excellent In Bruges, another Irish dominated comedy.
The story in brief is about Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson), a grumpy police officer who patrols a small Irish town. Investigating a murder he discovers it is linked to a drug ring being chased by FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle).
The story is told in the usual Irish fashion of lots of cursing and lots of drink with hilarity so commonplace it appears to be more a component of life than oddity. This story, while not overly complex, has enough turns to keep the viewer interested and enough insanity to keep everyone smiling. While the action in this movie is not of the realistic variety it serves to propel the storyline along with an excellent dry humour that is a joy to behold. The Irishness of the movie adds to the charm and for the Australian ear the accents are not difficult to understand. Don Cheadle holds his own against the brilliance of Breedan Gleeson.
If you want a funny story that is well crafted, intelligent, wry and enjoyable you will find all of this and more in The Guard.
8.5/10 and worth every bit of your time!
Halfway through the vampire edit and it is going well. So far I have done only a little tweaking and cleaning up with the story moving along nicely. Unfortunately I have come to a conclusion that will make more problems for me but the purpose of an edit is to ensure the story works. This one does but I realise that there is a distinct lack of sexual tension, something not required in every story but sex and the vampire myth have been old bedfellows for a very long time. 
As one who creates universes there are times that I find myself devoid of every emotion—positive and negative. Sometimes I dip into a despair so bleak that I can’t be arsed to even tend to day to day decisions. While I can intellectually assess these times as those when I need to dip into the well spring of inspiration, emotionally I simply drift until I bump into something. Sometimes it only lasts a day, sometimes it can last a week, this time it was brought on by ending the first Mr. Smith.
For me editing starts as a mechanical process. At least for the Vampiris Series as there is are histories attached to each chapter. I stopped the histories after part two believing that the audience would want to read only the story in the final part of the book. When I sent it to Tom for a look he vetoed the idea. He felt it looked like I had given up and had nothing more to say. Far from it, I could rave on for a few years, after all I did create the damn world! Right now I am in the middle of the Vampire Story and this is the most difficult one as Vampires are attached to a very particular and unforgiving genre, so I have to get my Gothic right!
The idiots on the box have struck again! This time their influence was so astounding that even my Dogue didn’t have to the opportunity to fart her disapproval. The PR industry is one of snake oil, hokum, sometimes sheer brilliance, but most often it obscures lies with fear and low expectation of the intelligence of the consumer. Then again there is always the 
