The Boondock Saints II: All Saint's Day Movie Review

It's sort of a miracle we have one Boondock Saints movie, let alone two. The story behind getting writer/director Troy Duffy's ultraviolent cult favorite to the screen was so ripe with drama, it inspired it's own movie, the documentary Overnight, which doesn't portray the auteur in a favorable light. The good news for fans of the cult is that you made it so successful we get another adventure of the Irish vigilante heroes. The good news for haters is that you can watch Overnight and marvel, time and time again.

Boondock Saints II: All Saint's Day picks up 8 years after the blood baths created by the MacManus Brothers, Connor and Murphy (Sean Patrick Flannery and Norman Reedus). They would execute criminals, in a bid to clean up the streets of Boston, to the public's support. Sort of like Batman, but with more silenced pistol fire. The first film ended with the brothers and their father publicly executing a mob boss in open court. This new film opens with the family living in Ireland, herding sheep with ridiculous beards.

Meanwhile, in Boston, someone has killed a priest in church, and made the body to look like the Saints were back in town. Being that the priest is an innocent, the brothers realize they are being called out for some reason, and believe that it's time to start up business again. There's a montage of shaving the beards and showering (seriously) and the boys are on a boat headed for the states. While there, they meet Romeo (Clifton Collins Jr), a crazy man who becomes the new recruit, filling the Rocco spot from the previous movie. And thus begins a series of slow motion gunfights where the brothers have about as much articulation as an action figure posed in eternal tribute to the gunfighting style of John Woo.

Oh, and this time around, instead of Willem Dafoe's flamboyantly homosexual FBI agent, we get his padewon learner Julie Benz, who I'm told is from Dexter and is kinda hot with her southern drawl and the way she says the word "Fuck". She once again posits crazy theories that the Boston cops (who are all the same guys from the first movie) marvel at, while trying to protect their own past actions from the first movie. There's also Judd Nelson, as the new head of the Italian crime family, dutifully collecting his check for a wonderful Bah-ston accent.

There's more to the plot, but who cares? You want to see gunfights? You get a lot of them! You want awkward banter that's out of place and pretty homophobic? Line up for this one! Do you want to know the origin of Billy Connolly's vest?!? Well, you're in luck because this movie quenches all those desires and more. It's definitely a movie for the fans of the original, chock full of flashbacks and callbacks and even characters from the previous film who already perished, who delivers what sounds like a discarded Denis Leary monologue. If you are a fan, this movie will make you cheer as loud as the drunken obnoxious asshole sitting in front of me, who felt it necessary to cheer almost every line, when he wasn't stomping the ground from the "hilarity" on screen.

As a movie, though, it's not very good at all. It repeats the structure of the first film, staging aftermaths and flashback sequences, stating mouthloads of exposition that are of no consequence or have been repeated from the previous scene, and generally preferring style over substance. And it kowtows to fans' desires way too much, presenting every minor character and walk on from the previous film. Seriously. EVERY CHARACTER. (Truth be told, the fans at my screening ate it up like chocolate covered bacon). All those problems withstanding, I will certainly give the movie credit for having an actual story, and almost too much plot, but that is negated by the fact that I didn't care about the story being told in the first place, no matter how much there is.

And the thing is, I was actually sort of digging the first half. The repetitive nature wasn't as glaring, and it was nice to see the boys in action once again. I liked their chemistry, I always welcome Billy Connolly in a movie, and Clifton Collins is entertaining as hell with his desire to be accepted and come up with a cool catchphrase. But towards the end, everything shifts into routine of scene-from-previous-film to desensitized violence and gore. It grew tiresome, and while I was hoping for a greater adventure from the Saints, as all involved have theoretically had the time to mature.  Alas, we get this letter to the fans. Though I take comfort in knowing I still might get that cool movie when the fans demand The Boondock Saints part 3 that this chapter shamelessly sets up at the end.
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