Picture the movie “Hot Fuzz” turned dark and you get “The Guard,” an offbeat, obscure Irish film seemingly missed by most major movie theaters. Comic timing and laugh-out-loud humor make this movie a worthy find.

“The Guard” opens with Sergeant Boyle (Brendan Gleeson, best known for playing Mad-Eye Moody in the Harry Potter films) of the Irish police department rummaging through the pockets of a dead man, finding drugs, throwing out half and enjoying the other half for himself.

Gleeson is a perfect choice to play this rogue, unconventional and racist cop. You can’t help but laugh at Sergeant Boyle’s exploits with drug dealers and weekends off accompanied by prostitutes (yes, plural). Needless to say, Sergeant Boyle is not your average crimefighter. Joining Boyle is American FBI agent Everett (Don Cheadle). Everett is calm and cool, the only “normal” investigator on the task force.

“The Guard” is a very black comedy, and you have to be able to laugh at dead bodies and tolerate Gleeson’s blistering expletives to enjoy it. The movie is relatively short, wrapping up at about 90 minutes. The middle section lags a bit, but the beginning and ending are the best. The movie keeps the viewer off guard: were they really arguing about philosophers? Was he really wearing a Hugh Heffner bathrobe? Are they trying to be like a western movie or “Lethal Weapon?”

The cast of “The Guard” is full of big-time foreign actors, making “The Guard” the “Ocean’s Eleven” of foreign films. “The Guard” will take some effort to find but is well worth the search. Sadly, I cannot give some of my favorite quotes due to the language of the film. But you can choose for yourself: is Sergeant Boyle “f-ing dumb or f-ing brilliant?”