Miniseries about gun trade hits bull's-eye

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The guns are in the hands of the good guys, detectives Rick Merriweather (Shawn Doyle, left), and Ford Sanders (Lyriq Bent).

It might not be a set-in-Winnipeg story, but there's a lot about the CBC miniseries Guns that feels local and relevant and real.

The two-part miniseries, which airs Sunday and Monday at 8 p.m., focuses on inner-city gun violence and the cross-border trade in illegal weapons that has allowed it to flourish. At a time when no more than a couple of days goes by without another random-gunfire incident on Winnipeg's streets, these are issues that hit pretty close to home.

Guns, which stars Gregory Smith (Everwood), Elisha Cuthbert (24), Colm Feore (Bon Cop, Bad Cop) and Shawn Doyle (The Eleventh Hour), is a darkly compelling tale that examines the causes and consequences of gun-related crime and the ever-more-urgent effort by law-enforcement agencies to stem the street-level violence by stopping the flow of weapons at its source.

In the case of this Toronto-bound story, one major source of illegal guns turns out to be a wealthy and well-connected family. Bobby Duguid (Smith) is an overprivileged punk who has chosen to make his living by importing handguns into Canada and selling them to street gangs and drug dealers.

He comes by his distasteful career choice honestly -- his father, Paul Duguid (Feore), operates a large multinational company that sells arms to governments in some of the world's political hot spots; his legal business, it turns out, is merely a front for an even larger illegal gun-running operation.

Both generations of the Duguid clan are under close observation by the Toronto Police Department's weapons enforcement unit, led by detectives Rick Merriweather and Ford Sanders (Doyle, Lyriq Bent). When a random shooting on a downtown street results in the death of a six-year-old girl, the evidence suggests a link between gun-toting gangsters and the rich clan's operations.

The cops try to turn up the heat on their task-force investigation of the Duguids' trade, only to find that the gun dealers are always a step ahead, thanks to tips received from a source inside the police department.

The good guys catch a couple of breaks, however, when Bobby Duguid -- whose arrogance far outdistances his smarts -- gets directly involved in a weapons heist that goes tragically wrong. At the same time he's placing himself in the task force's crosshairs, he enlists the help of his girlfriend, Frances (Cuthbert), to front a large-scale effort to smuggle guns from the U.S. to Canada.

As is pretty much always the case when firearms and fools are combined, things get bloody in a hurry.

Guns' appeal extends beyond its unsettling timeliness -- it's also a sharply written drama, filled with believably interesting characters and a sincere effort to find the humanity amid all the cold-steel weaponry and police-blotter misdeeds.

Smith and Cuthbert are engaging as young lovers living on life's dark side, and Doyle makes a strong contribution as a cop who's letting the weight of his work drag his family life downward. Also noteworthy is the effort by Clé Bennett (How She Move) as gangster Conrod Shannon, a just-released convict who can't wait to get his hands wrapped around another pistol grip.

And Feore, who does creepy-bad better than anybody else in the acting biz these days, is delightfully creepy in the role of one very, very bad dude.

It's almost time for temperatures -- and, as a result, crime rates -- to cool off on Canada's urban streets. But the gun problem is not going to go away; perhaps the presence of a program like Guns will help keep politicians and police departments focused on the issue and engaged in an effort to find a solution.

brad.oswald@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 6, 2009 B5