Sometimes it’s easier just to let them crash and burn than it is to chase after them.

Here’s a policeman born into Hot Fuzz with the will of In Bruges. Corpse fondling, drugs peddling, join-the-dots puzzles: these are the MOs of Sergeant Gerry Boyle, and is it any wonder? His words come courtesy of a script by John Michael McDonagh, whose brother once wrote his own debauched tale of drunken hitmen in picturesque Belgium. The Guard is a sequel in all but name and setting, rarely less than its absolute equal. These brothers know their black comedy.

Brendan Gleeson re-emerges as Boyle, whose pleasures are a little more amoral than those favoured by his previous incarnation. An Irish Garda, he takes a somewhat irreverent attitude to the business of police work, with the air of a man who has seen it all and lived to tell several tall tales. Accordingly, he isn’t one to blink in the face of crime or its misbegotten proponents. Gerry interviews a murder suspect, a young lad with a rap sheet for bestiality. “I thought that was all forgotten?” the kid whines, before figuring what the hell. “The same thing happened to Polanski, right?”.

Boyle is accompanied by his dying mother, in the case of the drug mule and the missing policeman. A black FBI agent is quickly called in, whom Boyle treats with a certain mischievous racism. Few others would get away with it, but Gleeson has a knack for bringing out the pardonable in his characters. Agent Wendall Everett takes the work seriously, and would be forgiven a double take upon hearing how cold-blooded murder and a $500,000 drug haul was deemed sufficient cause to take a day’s leave. Oh to see his reaction upon hearing of the two naughty debutantes his addled partner chose to spend it with.

In the absence of expensive sound stages, a clever script can be enough. Even discounting its inwardly-referential finale, The Guard revels in a self-aware deconstruction of its genre. In one scene, the ringleader hands some crooked cops a bag full of money, only to be accused of skimming from the top. A look of sheer incredulity begins to take form, an emotion to which Mark Strong is unusually well-suited. Then, the explosion. “This is the payoff. Why the fuck would I cheat you out of your money? That would defeat the entire purpose of the fucking interaction.”

The Guard shares with its sibling the good sense to be endlessly quotable, often for no reason, which is perhaps the best reason of all. Having watched the film, you may find yourself on the lookout for the appropriate occasion at which to declare “Like a donkey fucking a hippopotamus: it’s party time”. There’s a swaggering silliness to it all that you can’t help but get caught up with. The characters are large, the situations ridiculous. As a crime drama, it involves us to the extent we’re anxious to see Boyle succeed. He’s far too loveable to be a true antihero, and you root for his pyjama liaisons just as readily as you do his stalking the bad guys, pistol by his side. Don Cheedle would seem insubstantial by comparison, except that all straight men invariably do. That’s their purpose in a way, and one which Cheedle fully engages with in his bamboozled reactions to small-town Gaelic customs.

Moreover, how refreshing is it to have these cops and robbers, neither of whom can shoot straight? Fookin’ splendid, to be sure.