John Michael McDonagh wrote and directed The Guard which was nominated for a BAFTA, and replaced this film as the most successful independent Irish film of all time?
The Guard (2011 film) The Guard is a 2011 Irish buddy cop comedy film written and directed by John Michael McDonagh, starring Brendan Gleeson, Don Cheadle, Mark Strong and Liam Cunningham. It is the most successful independent Irish film of all time in terms of Irish box-office receipts, overtaking "The Wind that Shakes the Barley" (2006), which previously held this status.
How I Won the War How I Won the War is a black comedy film directed and produced by Richard Lester, released in 1967, based on a novel of the same name by Patrick Ryan. The film stars Michael Crawford as bungling British Army Officer Lieutenant Earnest Goodbody, with John Lennon (in his only non-musical role, as Musketeer Gripweed), Jack MacGowran (Musketeer Juniper), Roy Kinnear (Musketeer Clapper) and Lee Montague (Sergeant Transom) as soldiers under his command. The film uses an inconsistent variety of styles—vignette, straight-to-camera, and, extensively, parody of the war film genre, docu-drama, and popular war literature—to tell the story of 3rd Troop, the 4th Musketeers (a fictional regiment reminiscent of the Royal Fusiliers) and their misadventures in the Second World War. This is told in the comic/absurdist vein throughout, a central plot being the setting-up of an "Advanced Area Cricket Pitch" behind enemy lines in North Africa, but it is all broadly based on the Western Desert Campaign in mid-late 1942 and the crossing of the last intact bridge on the Rhine at Remagen in early 1945. The film was not critically well received.