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The Boondock Saints: All Saints Day
Ten years after the beloved, vigilante cult classic, The Boondock Saints, its sequel finally hit theaters. Not that anyone was expecting a continuation of what now looks like a potential series, since director Troy Duffy wasn’t in the best light with Hollywood financial types and since the first movie didn’t exactly sped towards a sequel. Its comedic release and a big chunk of the movies personality was killed off in the final act and the movie ended with a montage of opinions from the man on the street thus putting the movie to a visible, though not definitive, full stop.
Regardless, The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day sets out in the homeland of Ireland, where the MacManus brothers (Sean Patrick Flanery, Norman Reedus) have retired, along with their father Noah (Billy Connoly), and are now working on a sheep farm, leading simple, murder free lives of hard work and solitude. Tolkien wrote that tales of peace, though pleasant, are not all that interesting and the MacManus brothers are soon forced into action as the news of a murdered priest, “a good man”, reach them. The murder was staged to look like the work of the Saints, complete with two shots to the head, arms crossed and coins placed over the victims’ eyes.
“Someone’s trying to call them out. You kill a priest. In a church. And make it look like it was them. Bring them back with a vengeance. Someone thinks it’s really clever. Only one problem with this little plan... It worked.”
The brothers are off to Boston, where they are joined by a few additional characters but also a surprising amount of familiar faces. Amongst the former we find Romeo (Clifton Collins Jr.), a feisty yet self-conscious Mexican and Special Agent Eunice Bloom (Julie Benz), the prodigy of Paul Smecker (Willem Dafoe). It is difficult to decide who of these actors have the biggest shoes to fill. Is it the replacement of the funniest character from the first movie or the replacement of, well, Willem Dafoe? Difficult as that may be it is almost depressingly easy to immediately deduce who nearly pulls it off and who decidedly falls short.
Clifton Collins Jr. brings his own energy as he teams up with the Saints, much like David Della Rocco did in the first installment. Diehard fans will miss Rocco’s unique comedy but still find small comfort and a fair number of laughs in Collin’s attempt.
However, people expecting the same kind of brilliance as Willem Dafoe’s will be immensely disappointed with Julie Benz’s performance. It is clear that director Troy Duffy wanted to bring the same kind of punch he did with Dafoe but a questionable (at best) and catastrophic (at worst) casting error resulted in a two dimensional character with an unconvincing, outright laughable southern accent slapped on top.
But why should one compare these characters? Because they are obvious replacements of their predecessors and attempt to fulfill the exact same roles. The same kind of thing occurs with various scenes in the movie. The prank scene, the black and white documentary like montage, the death of a dear friend scene, the scene that sets up the federal agent and the armory scene are all in this sequel as well. But since these are obviously copied from the first movie they don’t pack the same amount of punch anymore.
And herein lays the core problem with The Boondock Saints: All Saints Day; it desperately attempts to be the original, so much so that it comes off as formulaic, bland and even cowardice.
Until the last part of the movie.
One of the aforementioned familiar faces unexpectedly swoops in and with a well-written, well-acted rant that does the character justice and then some, launches the movie into welcomed, unfamiliar territory. With this rant Troy Duffy proves that he can do fan service the right way instead of just slightly editing scenes and characters from a movie that came out ten years ago, in essence plagiarizing his own work. Regardless the plot gains momentum from here on out with well paced action beats that climaxes nicely and fades out even better, leaving the audience with a highly intriguing plot for a third installment.
One wonders why the quality and originality of these last twenty minutes couldn’t have infused the rest of the film. One wonders why we have to gawk at unfortunate eye tuck jobs instead of having allowed the Saints to grow old and battle worn. One wonders why we have to sit through the same predictable plot for a sizeable portion of the movie, yawning and snickering at obvious, inferior replacements of previously well done characters.
All Saints Day is a mixed affaire. Performances are all over the map and the writing spans from original and funny to unoriginal and laughable, yet somehow it still manages to make any fan of the first film crave seeing a third.
Ten years after the beloved, vigilante cult classic, The Boondock Saints, its sequel finally hit theaters. Not that anyone was expecting a continuation of what now looks like a potential series, since director Troy Duffy wasn’t in the best light with Hollywood financial types and since the first movie didn’t exactly sped towards a sequel. Its comedic release and a big chunk of the movies personality was killed off in the final act and the movie ended with a montage of opinions from the man on the street thus putting the movie to a visible, though not definitive, full stop.
Regardless, The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day sets out in the homeland of Ireland, where the MacManus brothers (Sean Patrick Flanery, Norman Reedus) have retired, along with their father Noah (Billy Connoly), and are now working on a sheep farm, leading simple, murder free lives of hard work and solitude. Tolkien wrote that tales of peace, though pleasant, are not all that interesting and the MacManus brothers are soon forced into action as the news of a murdered priest, “a good man”, reach them. The murder was staged to look like the work of the Saints, complete with two shots to the head, arms crossed and coins placed over the victims’ eyes.
“Someone’s trying to call them out. You kill a priest. In a church. And make it look like it was them. Bring them back with a vengeance. Someone thinks it’s really clever. Only one problem with this little plan... It worked.”
The brothers are off to Boston, where they are joined by a few additional characters but also a surprising amount of familiar faces. Amongst the former we find Romeo (Clifton Collins Jr.), a feisty yet self-conscious Mexican and Special Agent Eunice Bloom (Julie Benz), the prodigy of Paul Smecker (Willem Dafoe). It is difficult to decide who of these actors have the biggest shoes to fill. Is it the replacement of the funniest character from the first movie or the replacement of, well, Willem Dafoe? Difficult as that may be it is almost depressingly easy to immediately deduce who nearly pulls it off and who decidedly falls short.
Clifton Collins Jr. brings his own energy as he teams up with the Saints, much like David Della Rocco did in the first installment. Diehard fans will miss Rocco’s unique comedy but still find small comfort and a fair number of laughs in Collin’s attempt.
However, people expecting the same kind of brilliance as Willem Dafoe’s will be immensely disappointed with Julie Benz’s performance. It is clear that director Troy Duffy wanted to bring the same kind of punch he did with Dafoe but a questionable (at best) and catastrophic (at worst) casting error resulted in a two dimensional character with an unconvincing, outright laughable southern accent slapped on top.
But why should one compare these characters? Because they are obvious replacements of their predecessors and attempt to fulfill the exact same roles. The same kind of thing occurs with various scenes in the movie. The prank scene, the black and white documentary like montage, the death of a dear friend scene, the scene that sets up the federal agent and the armory scene are all in this sequel as well. But since these are obviously copied from the first movie they don’t pack the same amount of punch anymore.
And herein lays the core problem with The Boondock Saints: All Saints Day; it desperately attempts to be the original, so much so that it comes off as formulaic, bland and even cowardice.
Until the last part of the movie.
One of the aforementioned familiar faces unexpectedly swoops in and with a well-written, well-acted rant that does the character justice and then some, launches the movie into welcomed, unfamiliar territory. With this rant Troy Duffy proves that he can do fan service the right way instead of just slightly editing scenes and characters from a movie that came out ten years ago, in essence plagiarizing his own work. Regardless the plot gains momentum from here on out with well paced action beats that climaxes nicely and fades out even better, leaving the audience with a highly intriguing plot for a third installment.
One wonders why the quality and originality of these last twenty minutes couldn’t have infused the rest of the film. One wonders why we have to gawk at unfortunate eye tuck jobs instead of having allowed the Saints to grow old and battle worn. One wonders why we have to sit through the same predictable plot for a sizeable portion of the movie, yawning and snickering at obvious, inferior replacements of previously well done characters.
All Saints Day is a mixed affaire. Performances are all over the map and the writing spans from original and funny to unoriginal and laughable, yet somehow it still manages to make any fan of the first film crave seeing a third.