You wouldn’t want to mess with Gerry Boyle, Brendan Gleeson’s acid-dropping, three-way whoring, pint-slugging Irish cop in the smart new comedy, “The Guard.”
County Galway is his beat, and his partner is Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle), a by-the-book G-man matriculated from the finest American universities and sent to Ireland to bust some big-time drug traffickers.
Gleeson has made a career blending seamlessly into ensembles as well as tackling standout supporting parts in movies like “Braveheart” and “Gangs of New York.”
He can play working-class or sophisticate with equal dexterity, but he’s never more convincing than when he’s in his home country of Ireland, as in John Boorman’s superb “The General” or here in “The Guard.