The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day

The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day

First off, I really wanted to hate this movie. Everything I had read about the movie told me I wouldn’t have liked it. To my surprise, I actually kind of liked this sequel, but that’s not saying much. The movie works when it’s just trying to be a silly vigilante movie, but then turns into a strange slow-motion personal story that limps along to the finish.

The first two acts are a lot of fun, despite itself. It is when Duffy is trying to be artful and shift the focus of the movie away from its roots that I really have a problem with.

Well, I know I’m not in the demographic to like the movie and I am not a huge fan of the first one. Director/writer Troy Duffy shows that he hasn’t grown much as a writer because the writing is still stilted and out of place. Characters cuss like it’s the first time they’ve ever been allowed to cuss before. Duffy is a little better with the directing, but starts to show his weaknesses in the last act, which shifts away from the fun vigilante/revenge plot.

Duffy even goes for the lowbrow with showing a man in his underwear shitting himself on screen. I probably would have found this sort of thing funny 15 years ago, but now just seems childish in a movie about revenge and religion. Did they really need to actually show the stain?

Boondock Saints II is stupid and the director thinks he writing a compelling movie, and that’s part of the charm of the second movie with its first and second acts. The main problem is when Duffy completely throws out the plot about the brothers fighting mobsters and drug dealers for a stupid attempt at making an art house type of movie. The two plots don’t exactly fit and seems haphazardly put together for Duffy to make sense of the conflicting stories. That was when I lost complete interest in the movie, and tuned out.

A better writer would have incorporated the two storylines in better manner.

- Julie Benz is very amusing and nice to look at in the movie. Except, her character almost goes nowhere toward the third act and is almost completely dropped from the story altogether. She’s really good in her scenes.

- Judd Nelson as the mob boss: Every time saw him on screen, I kept thinking, “Hey, that’s Hot Rob from Transformers!”

If you were a huge fan of the first Boondocks movie, then you’ll probably like this one. For me, the movie kind of worked on a simple level for the first two acts, but totally lost me with the third. I will give Duffy credit for getting back to making movies after ten years of being screwed over, but he could have at least improved his style of writing.

Grade: C-