Terrific Reaction to Irish film THE GUARD at its World Premiere last night in Sundance Film Festival
Element Pictures Distribution is delighted with the reaction that THE GUARD received at its world premiere last night in Park City, Utah as part of the hugely prestigious Sundance film festival. THE GUARD was selected as the opening film of the World Dramatic Competition at the 2011 festival.
The Los Angeles Times reported that film buyers flocked to the sold out screening "..like moths to a flame, making it a fitting festival launch".
According to Variety"... it's Gleeson who rightly owns the screen as a beer-swilling, crotch-grabbing, Derringer-firing crusader with one hell of a filthy mouth to go along with his heart of gold." and the director John Michael McDonagh's "filmmaking crackles with energy".
Directed by John Michael McDonagh, THE GUARD has a formidable cast, including Brendan Gleeson, (In Bruges, Harry Potter, and The General) Don Cheadle, (Iron Man 2, Crash, Hotel Rwanda) Fionnuala Flanagan, (Lost, Transamerica) Liam Cunningham, (Hunger, The Wind that Shakes the Barley) and Mark Strong (KickAss, Sherlock Holmes). THE GUARD is a thriller-comedy set on the west coast of Ireland where 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.
THE GUARD is an Irish/UK co-production, backed by the Irish Film Board and Section 481 as well as International Financiers. It's produced by Chris Clark and Flora Fernandez Marengo for Reprisal Films and Ed Guiney (Garage) and Andrew Lowe (The Wind that Shakes the Barley) for Element Pictures.
The cast and filmmakers of THE GUARD travelled to Sundance with the assistance of Culture Ireland.
Irish audiences will get an opportunity to see THE GUARD in cinemas when it goes on theatrical release this summer through Element Pictures Distribution.