Premise: Brendan Gleeson is a drug loving, hooker banging Irish cop (in Ireland!), but he’s still good at his job (like McNulty!). When an international drug smuggling ring heads to his part of Ireland, an American FBI agent (Don Cheadle) becomes his new partner and *RECORD SCRATCH* there’s a culture clash! How charmingly original.
Pros:
-It has its funny moments. The jokes that actually hit are pretty clever.
-It has an entertaining, albeit highly unoriginal plot. Nothing you haven’t seen before. Decent from a buddy cop film perspective.
-Brendan Gleeson is clearly having a fun time, it shows. Don Cheadle is classic awesome Don Cheadle. The chemistry between these two is the best part of the movie. And it’s basically what the entire movie banks on. Without Gleeson and Cheadle being their charming selves, this movie would be painfully below average. It’s not even their characters so much, they are just likable actors doing a likable job.
Cons:
-I think it has too many jokes where you’re laughing (or in my case; chuckling) at the fact that he is making Irish jokes in an Irish accent. They aren’t even that particularly funny, but it becomes “haha, he said something I could barely make out with his garbled English, but I assume it was great. Foreign accents are hi-larious.” I will admit, the timing on most of Gleeson’s jokes are pretty darn good, but I just didn’t laugh that much. Probably just me, since everyone else seemed to think this movie was amazing.
-Underused Mark Strong.
-Maybe I’m just slowly dying inside lately, but again, the emotional scenes didn’t seem all that emotional to me… I did like the blend of serious and funny though, it tried to have a pretty good balance.
Final Thoughts: I actually saw this in theaters like two or three weeks ago, but I’ve put off writing a review of it because I was pretty unimpressed, and uninspired. It’s a movie I really wanted to like more. I can see why people would really like it. The two leads have a nice back and forth the whole movie. Brendan Gleeson’s character is noticeably badass in his ways. And the ending ain’t bad. I don’t know, maybe I just wasn’t feeling the “Oh man! This cop gets high and bangs prostitutes. He’s so coooooooooooool…! Cuz he’s a cop, get it? Cops don’t usually do that!” It just feels like it’s been done before. I was pretty hung over and tired when I saw it too, maybe that factored in. I don’t particularly think there’s anything to HATE about this movie, but I don’t feel like there’s really that much to LOVE. It’s just somewhere in the middle. And I wasn’t thinking it when I was actually watching it, but when I got home, I thought to myself “Did I just see a crappier, Irish version of Hot Fuzz…?”
6.5 out of 10
Dino Bone 