To start the Christmas holidays, my dear man and I watch an excellent Irish comedy The Guard which is utterly non-politically correct, hence we laughed so much (maybe?). A long time policeman played by excellent Irish actor Brendan Gleeson in County Galway, has absolutely no interest in the international cocaine-smuggling ring that has brought FBI agent Wendell Everett played by American actor Don Cheadle to Galway. “If you take The Guard down to its bare bones essence it is just a buddy cop movie,” says McDonagh, the film director. The movie is in fact much more than that because of all the witty dialogues going on and the unconventional humour based on xenophobia, bigotry and race, experienced through the eyes of Cheadle’s FBI man. As a French person, I do connect with the Irish dark humour with lines like, 'I’m Irish; racism is part of my culture’!

I have just read in an article from the Telegraph that "as a filmmaker, McDonagh is self-taught. He is a writer and had no great desire to direct, his decision to step behind the camera prompted solely by a wish to protect the integrity of his script. “I had an awful time on Ned Kelly,” he says. “I hated what they did to the script, and if you do strip away the more contentious parts of The Guard, it becomes just another standard movie. My whole intention here was to subvert convention.” That is surely the reason why I enjoyed watching this film so much!