Sure it’s a mismatched buddy cop movie. It’s also a fish out of water story and a precious Indie “aren’t the Irish adorable” movie. There are even moments where it veers awkwardly into Tarantino noir territory. Fortunately, the weight of those cliches does not sink the film. The charm and the amusing misunderstandings are delivered in quantity, and charm and amusement seem to be the better part of the film’s modest ambitions. They are enough.

Brendan Gleeson is quite likable as a small-town Irish cop whose investigation of a rare local murder puts him in the center of an international drug-smuggling investigation. Don Cheadle is equally strong as a put-upon FBI agent charged with working with Gleeson to close the case. Their chemistry is pleasing and the movie has a goodly number of chuckles, provided you can parse the brogues, many of which are thick enough to make you wish you could rewind a bit. There are a lot of elements you’ll see coming (peculiar locals, crumbling battlements, naive cultural misapprehensions) but there’s also enough you won’t to keep things interesting.

It’s a smaller film, and it’s only playing the art house circuit (The Egyptian in my neck of the woods) so if you want to see it in the theater you’ll need to move smartly. I imagine it will be available to rent before Christmas, and it’s more than worth your 90 minutes.