Lots more from The Guard

With The Guard in cinemas UK wide from today, Optimum has sent out 3 new clips to go with the two previously released.

Clip - Confessions & Cocaine

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Clip - A Sociopath Not A Psychopath

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Clip - Stealing An Ostrich

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Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) is a small-town cop with a confrontational personality, a subversive sense of humour, a dying mother, a fondness for prostitutes, and absolutely no interest whatsoever in the international cocaine-smuggling ring that has brought FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) to his door. However, despite the fact that Boyle seems more interested in mocking and undermining Everett than in actively working to solve the case, he finds that circumstances keep pulling him back into the thick of it.

First his tiresomely enthusiastic new partner McBride disappears, then his favourite hooker attempts to blackmail him into turning a blind eye, and finally the drug-traffickers themselves try to buy him off as they have every other member of the local police force. These events unwittingly offend Boyle's murky moral code. He realises that he needs to take matters into his own hands, and the only person he can trust is Everett. And so the scene is set for an explosive finale.

In UK cinemas NOW

Life imitates art

Optimum Releasing’s Anglo-Irish comedy-thriller THE GUARD, which opens in UK cinemas on August 19th, stars Brendan Gleeson as an unorthodox country policeman and Don Cheadle as a by-the-book FBI agent who team up, unassisted, to investigate the smuggling of half-a-billion dollars-worth of cocaine by boat into a remote area of the west of Ireland.

The story of the film, which has already proved itself a critical and audience success in the US and in Ireland, where it is breaking box-office records, closely parallels the methods of the smugglers who are currently under investigation by SOCA and the UK Border Agency, despite having been written more than two years ago. The quantity of cocaine is almost identical, as is its mode of transport – a luxury motor cruiser – the “Annabel Lee” in THE GUARD and the “Louise” as its real life counterpart.

Garda Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Gleeson) is a small-town cop with a confrontational personality, a subversive sense of humour, a dying mother, a fondness for prostitutes, and absolutely no interest whatsoever in the international cocaine-smuggling ring that has brought FBI agent Wendell Everett (Cheadle) to his door. However, despite the fact that Boyle seems more interested in mocking and undermining Everett than in actively working to solve the case, he finds that circumstances keep pulling him back into the thick of it.

First his tiresomely enthusiastic new partner disappears, then his favourite hooker attempts to blackmail him into turning a blind eye, and finally the drug-traffickers themselves try to buy him off as they have every other member of the local police force. These events unwittingly offend Boyle's murky moral code. He realises that he needs to take matters into his own hands, and the only person he can trust is Everett. And so the scene is set for an explosive finale.

Written and directed by John Michael McDonagh and starring Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle as the ill-matched pair of lawmen, THE GUARD also stars Mark Strong, Liam Cunningham and Fionnula Flanagan.

A Reprisal Films and Element Pictures production in association with Prescience, Aegis Film Fund, UK Film Council, Crescendo Productions and Eos Pictures LLP, with the participation of Bord Scannán na hÉireann/the Irish Film Board, THE GUARD is released by Optimum Releasing in the United Kingdom.

THE GUARD hits UK cinemas August 19, 2011

Even more from The Guard

Not that long to go before the UK gets The Guard. Now I can give you a couple of hilarious clips from the film.

Clip - Half A Billion

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Clip - Did You Grow Up In The Projects?

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Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) is a small-town cop with a confrontational personality, a subversive sense of humour, a dying mother, a fondness for prostitutes, and absolutely no interest whatsoever in the international cocaine-smuggling ring that has brought FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) to his door. However, despite the fact that Boyle seems more interested in mocking and undermining Everett than in actively working to solve the case, he finds that circumstances keep pulling him back into the thick of it.

First his tiresomely enthusiastic new partner McBride disappears, then his favourite hooker attempts to blackmail him into turning a blind eye, and finally the drug-traffickers themselves try to buy him off as they have every other member of the local police force. These events unwittingly offend Boyle's murky moral code. He realises that he needs to take matters into his own hands, and the only person he can trust is Everett. And so the scene is set for an explosive finale.

Hitting UK screens August 19, 2011

The Guard makes it number one in Ireland

The Anglo-Irish production THE GUARD has made a stunning debut at the Irish box-office, with a weekend gross of more than half a million Euro (over £450,000, with a screen average of close to £6,000), knocking “Bridesmaids” from the coveted No 1 position. The opening weekend results of John Michael McDonagh’s comedy thriller are comparable to other hugely successful Irish films such as “Michael Collins” and “In Bruges”. The Galway-set THE GUARD, a Reprisal Films and Element Pictures production, also picked up the Best Irish Feature award at the Galway Film Fleadh this weekend.

Optimum Releasing’s THE GUARD, in which Brendan Gleeson stars as an unorthodox Irish policeman who joins forces with a straitlaced FBI agent, played by Don Cheadle, to take on an international drug-smuggling gang, will open in UK cinemas on August 19th; a hit with critics and audiences alike at leading international film festivals Sundance, TriBeca, Edinburgh and Los Angeles.

Sergeant Gerry Boyle is a small-town cop with a confrontational personality, a subversive sense of humour, a dying mother, a fondness for prostitutes, and absolutely no interest whatsoever in the international cocaine-smuggling ring that has brought FBI agent Wendell Everett to his door. However, despite the fact that Boyle seems more interested in mocking and undermining Everett than in actively working to solve the case, he finds that circumstances keep pulling him back into the thick of it. First his tiresomely enthusiastic new partner McBride disappears, then his favourite hooker attempts to blackmail him into turning a blind eye, and finally the drug-traffickers themselves try to buy him off as they have every other member of the local police force.

These events unwittingly offend Boyle's murky moral code. He realises that he needs to take matters into his own hands, and the only person he can trust is Everett. And so the scene is set for an explosive finale.

Written and directed by John Michael McDonagh (“Ned Kelly”) and starring Brendan Gleeson (the “Harry Potter” series, “In Bruges”) and Don Cheadle (the “Oceans” films, “Hotel Rwanda”) as the ill-matched pair of lawmen, THE GUARD also stars Mark Strong (“Sherlock Holmes”, “Kick-Ass”), Liam Cunningham (“Hunger”, “The Wind That Shakes The Barley”), Fionnuala Flanagan (“The Invention of Lying”), David Wilmot (“The Tudors”), Rory Keenan (“Zonad”), Pat Shortt (“Garage”) and newcomer Katarina Cas.

THE GUARD is produced by Reprisal’s Chris Clark and Flora Fernandez Marengo and Element’s Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe, with Martin McDonagh, Don Cheadle, Lenore Zerman, Tim Smith, Paul Brett, Ralph Kamp and David Nash as executive producers. THE GUARD is a Reprisal Films and Element Pictures production in association with Prescience, Aegis Film Fund, UK Film Council and Crescendo Productions and with the participation of Bord Scannán na hÉireann/the Irish Film Board and is distributed in the United Kingdom by Optimum Releasing.

THE GUARD will be released nationwide by Optimum Releasing on August 19, 2011

More from The Guard

Along with the images and, probable, US trailer that arrived earlier in June, we now have a UK trailer and poster for this wonderfully silly, subversive, film.

To watch this video, you need the latest Flash-Player and active javascript in your browser.

Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) is a small-town cop with a confrontational personality, a subversive sense of humour, a dying mother, a fondness for prostitutes, and absolutely no interest whatsoever in the international cocaine-smuggling ring that has brought FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) to his door. However, despite the fact that Boyle seems more interested in mocking and undermining Everett than in actively working to solve the case, he finds that circumstances keep pulling him back into the thick of it.

First his tiresomely enthusiastic new partner McBride disappears, then his favourite hooker attempts to blackmail him into turning a blind eye, and finally the drug-traffickers themselves try to buy him off as they have every other member of the local police force. These events unwittingly offend Boyle's murky moral code. He realises that he needs to take matters into his own hands, and the only person he can trust is Everett. And so the scene is set for an explosive finale.

Hitting UK screens August 19, 2011

Leave The Guard alone

Another subversive comedy with Brendan Gleeson. This time he's on the side of good. Well goodish at least. From playing a hit man in In Bruges to a policeman in this one.

Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) is a small-town cop with a confrontational personality, a subversive sense of humour, a dying mother, a fondness for prostitutes, and absolutely no interest whatsoever in the international cocaine-smuggling ring that has brought FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) to his door. However, despite the fact that Boyle seems more interested in mocking and undermining Everett than in actively working to solve the case, he finds that circumstances keep pulling him back into the thick of it.

First his tiresomely enthusiastic new partner McBride disappears, then his favourite hooker attempts to blackmail him into turning a blind eye, and finally the drug-traffickers themselves try to buy him off as they have every other member of the local police force. These events unwittingly offend Boyle's murky moral code. He realises that he needs to take matters into his own hands, and the only person he can trust is Everett. And so the scene is set for an explosive finale.

Hitting UK screens August 19, 2011