MOVIE REVIEW
The Guard (2011)
Sony Pictures Classics
“The Guard” is that rare breed of crime story that involves a passive protagonist, à la “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.” It’s not that the protagonist in “The Guard,” Brendan Gleeson’s Sgt. Boyle, apathetically takes a backseat as events unfold. He is simply more occupied with cracking wise, cavorting with prostitutes and tending to his dying mother than actually solving the case at hand. It is quite an achievement, then, that writer-director John Michael McDonagh manages to calculatingly frustrate and engage viewers simultaneously through the duration of the film.