The Guard is a buddy movie but also much, much more. Brendan Gleeson plays Sgt. Gerry Boyle, "the last of the independents," as he proclaims at the local cop shop. He's a big man given to carnal pleasures, including women and drink. When it's convenient, Boyle plays the local yokel, but he's cagier than his Benny Hill faade suggests.

But all is not well in County Galway. Into this desolate northwestern Irish town swans FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle), hot on a shipment of drugs with a street value of half a billion -- no wait, $ 400 million. Well, a couple hundred million, at least. While the value of the contraband may be exaggerated, it has undeniably brought a boatload of trouble to the small town.

Brendan Gleeson, left, and Don Cheadle star in The Guard. (Alliance Films)

With a murder and a missing cop to deal with, Boyle and Everett become partners of a sort -- that is, after Boyle finishes his day off (which entails playing dress up with a couple of escorts in from Dublin). The director, John Michael McDonagh, has said he hates Hollywood films, so fortunately for us, The Guard steers clear of the buddy cop blueprint. Boyle and Everett never quite warm up to each other. Indeed, Everett seems to spend much of the time pondering whether Boyle's as dumb as he seems.

Also, as if to assert his "independence," McDonagh give us our first glimpse of the drug-runners in the middle of a wide-ranging discourse on philosophy. The thugs include Liam Cunningham as an unflappable leader and Mark Strong as a tough guy suffering a terminal case of ennui.

Mark Strong in a scene from The Guard. (Alliance Films)

Having already scored with the bleakly demented In Bruges, The Guard is Gleeson's second black comedy and his performance anchors the new film. It's not every actor who could encompass Boyle's many contradictions: keen cop, proud soldier and sensual man.

Gleeson, perhaps most familiar to North American audiences for his role as Alastor Mad-Eye Moody, runs the gamut in The Guard: a profane Celtic Columbo one moment, the next a son, sweetly laying his mother to rest. As the counterpoint to Boyle's chaos, Cheadle stretches out Everett to a slow simmer -- a symphony of sighs and arched eyebrows.

The Guard is a film that is product of its environment: an Ireland where violence and old rivalries are never far from the surface. Despite his professed disdain for Hollywood, the director does look westward in his finale, as the two leads head off - guns blazing - with a Morricone-style soundtrack thundering behind them; a final stylistic flourish to a black comedy as dark and as tasty as a pint of Guinness.

RATING: Four-and-a-half pints out of five.