Movie Review: Boondock Saints
As both a Catholic and violent movie enjoyer I had high hopes for this movie. Alas, they were dashed within the first fifteen minutes after the first set of idiotic action scenes and cheesy freeze frame character intros.
Boondock Saints is a movie that, on paper, could have worked even as a piece of self-aware kitsch. The concept certainly had potential: Two devout Irish Catholic brothers go on a righteous vigilante murder spree against the criminal underworld of Boston. It’s very comic book and in its best moments it has that over-the-top 90’s Tarantino-esque vibe executed much better in other films. The black costumes, the prayers before executions, the rock soundtrack — the film definitely gets points for style. Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus are true breakout stars here with their intensity and humor. Willem Dafoe also steals every scene he is in playing a gay FBI special agent hot on the brothers’ trail.
Unfortunately the movie trips over itself at every turn, sabotaging its own good ideas. Firstly, the action scenes just don’t work. They’re just too stupid. At no point do these supposedly super badass brothers, who speak every language and have a massive arsenal of weapons, demonstrate even basic combat competence. They absolutely should have been killed in the first fight with the Russians and the toilet and the jump off the building. They absolutely should have been killed when they fell through a ceiling to be suspended in the middle of a room with a dozen armed people. The gunplay is laughable — zero recoil, zero noise, zero accuracy or lethality if willed by the writers — and ultimately not even fun to watch.
The other problem with the action scenes is the fact that most of them are shown backwards chronologically; we see the aftermath first, then the movie rewinds and shows what happened. As a consequence none of the action scenes have any tension. Before we see any of them play out we already know everything went perfectly. This device only really works on one occasion where we see Agent Smecker, Dafoe’s character, work out the details of a crime in real time as he imagines himself there along with the killers. This scene was technically well done and gave us the meme-worthy, “There was a firefight!” moment. Beyond that though the action in this movie is boring and immediately forgettable.
A good plot and good characters could have mitigated these shortcomings. Boondock Saints fails on both points. The titular characters, the MacManus twins, never really get to properly establish and own their crusade. Early in the movie they team up with an idiot former mob henchman named Rocco and spend the rest of the movie just following his orders. I genuinely do not understand why the story went in this direction. The shouty incompetent Rocco adds nothing of value to the team and serves only to botch their jobs and get unceremoniously murdered in the film’s final act. What’s worse is that his death is meant to be serious and sad. This is impossible for the audience given how Rocco has been played as a too dumb to survive in the criminal underworld comic relief character the entire movie.
They try to raise the stakes towards the end by having the mob villains bring in a super badass gunman named Il Duce (played effectively by Bill Connolly) but he is immediately squandered by being a complete non-threat. When the brothers’ father shows up at the end to join their crusade we get this cheesy courtroom speech scene. They lecture terrified attendees at gunpoint about moral principles, “people of every faith” can follow and how they will send criminals to, “whatever God you wish.” They spent all this time murdering in the name of their faith and then just toss it aside in the film’s climactic moment (they should have said they will send criminals to hell).
Boondock Saints could have been great had it properly leveraged its cool concept and focused more on the characters of Connor and Murphy MacManus. It could have been a really neat videogame or HBO series. At the very least it could have made for a classic tight hour and a half thriller like John Wick. Instead we get a 110 minute movie that felt overlong and aimless. There are some fun moments at least. A few of the comedy beats will make you smile, including a cameo from Ron Jeremy. If you like Norman Reedus and Willem Dafoe, or just enjoy Irish accents and lots of loud swearing, you may get a kick out of this. Otherwise, I just cannot recommend this one.
Grade: C
