The original Boondock Saints was relegated to video store shelves before most
would-be fans had an inkling it had passed them by in theaters. But eventually,
chances are one night a friend would suggest watching this weird, violent movie
about hot twin brothers with a serious gun fetish, Catholic complex, and Latin
tattoos, and you'd pass the word along. Basically, Murphy MacManus (Norman
Reedus) and Connor MacManus (Sean Patrick Flanery) were blue-collar Irish guys
who decided that they'd had enough of the scum on the streets and began wiping
them out in various creative ways, although their favorite weapons were and
remain the gun. Their buddy Rocco, a mob errand boy, was the de facto third
Saint. Meanwhile, they're being tracked by a very odd FBI agent by the name of
Paul Smecker (Willem Dafoe in a fabulously bizarre performance) and three
bumbling local cops. And then there's Il Duce (Billy Connolly), the infamous
assassin who's finally paroled from prison.
Ten years later, the Saints are in Ireland with Il Duce, aka their dad, when the
word comes that someone in Boston killed a priest they knew and tried to make it
look like the Saints did it. Game on. The boys shed their woolly sweaters and
their long hair and beards and return to Boston.
They pick up a new Saint on the way, Romeo (Clifton Collins Jr.), a Hispanic guy
hooked into the Mexican mob in Boston. The new FBI agent on the case is Eunice
Bloom (Julie Benz), a slick and smart Southern woman who wears high heels to
murder scenes and wears her gun holster like an expensive belt. The Boondock
Saints II offers more guns, more un-PC jokes ("A real man never says he'll just
put the tip in and then just puts the tip in!"), and more mobsters – basically,
just more of everything. Even Duffy admitted, "We definitely poured on the
cheese factor sometimes with the story, and frankly a lot of the characters, we
pushed that humor a little bit farther than we did last time."
Unfortunately, the cheese drowns out what was so attractive about the Saints and
their quest the first time around. The original was a dark comedy – remember the
cat? – and the brothers were obviously quite happy to drink a lot, get into bar
fights, and generally act like bad boys, but they never would have said, "Let's
do some gratuitous violence," like Murphy (Reedus) does as the brothers head
towards another showdown in Boondock Saints II.
Smecker was totally over-the-top batsh*t awesome, and trying to bring in another
character that's flatter than flat to replace him doesn't work. It takes quite a
while for Bloom to get into her groove, but by then it's too late to really care
about her. The dialogue is weaker, the characters are sillier, the plot is
thinner, and even the mobsters are dumber. (And let's not even discuss either
Judd Nelson as the mob boss with a panic room or the priest-killer with a height
complex.)
Overall, as a Boondock Saints fan (not an uberfan with Boondock clothing or
tattoos, mind you), I was disappointed by the sequel, even though it's not that
bad. It's just not that good, either.
