Boondock Saints 2- All Saints Day 5/10

So back in 1999 a movie known as the Boondock Saints was released strait to video. It was written and directed by one Troy Duffy, a formal bartender turned filmmaker with no actual experience in making films, and after a few years it became a cult hit, mostly with college student, noticeably the ones that like to pretend they are Irish on St. paddy's day. I saw the movie back in what I would have to guess was either 2001 or 2002, before the movie was over hyped as the best movie ever made, and I loved it. I liked the story, I liked the characters, and although flawed, I liked the direction, especially given the fact that this guy was a complete amateur to the industry. I could go on about Duffy's overnight success, but you could also just look it up instead of being lazy. or watch the documentary Overnight, which is actually a pretty boring movie.

So I really liked the first film, and over the years as I seen more and more people come to like it, and hype it up, I've come to associate the movie with a certain type of person, which I'll just say is not the type of person I consider myself to be. you know, stupid people. Not that the movie makes you stupid for liking it, just that it tends to attract really stupid people to it. Still on the other side I see snobs that are unable to overlook some small flaws in what is an otherwise very watchable and enjoyable movie. So you have the idiots that like it, and the film faggots that can't understand the hype behind it. It makes the movie a pain in the ass to talk about, so I'll stop talking about it.

The director liked the name so much he named his band the same fucking thing.

After 10 years the sequel, long rumored to be in the making, has finally come out and... its pretty underwhelming.

The movie takes place some 8 years after the first, if I remember correctly, where we find the brothers and their father, who have taken their prayer from the first movie quite literately, living as shepherds in Ireland. The thing I liked about the first movie was that it ended with a climax that works for the movie, but ends with a felling that things are just getting started. It feels like the story is just an intro for the characters, like this is how the saints first got started, and it ends with a promise of things escalating. Then we find out that they just ran back to Ireland to hide out, which pretty much killed my enthusiasm for the story. What follows is what I would consider to be the most unbalanced movie I've seen in a long time.

The true sequel to the Boondock Saints is when Sean Patrick Flanery played an angel called Veritas in: Veritas!

The movie itself is more or less a collection of remixed scenes from the first movie. If you remember the scene from the first movie where the brothers bumble around in the vents before accidentally falling in and killing a room full of Russian mobsters, then be prepared to see that scene redone 3 other times, but with slight differences. In fact the movie is more or less Duffy taking that scene from the first movie and using it as a madlib for the scenes in this one. Instead of falling through a the ceiling, they pop out of a wooden crate being driven around by their goofy Mexican buddy, a remixed version of their goofy Italian buddy Rocko from the first one, as everything goes wrong and they have to creatively deal with Asian gangsters. Or have them jump off of skafalding to surprise a room full of mobsters, but oh no, something goes wrong, and they... have to jump off of skafalding... or maybe they were suppose to take it down and shoot through the window. I don't remember. the point is that they come up with stupid ideas, and then they go wrong, and then we are treated to supposed "action scenes" where the two brothers stand around with both handing pumping out bullets into stupid gangsters that can't seem to shoot two brothers who are standing around. Theres also a new FBI agent, remixed version of Defoe's character from the first one (She puts ear plugs in to concentrate instead of putting in head phones and listening to classical music) as she explains what happened while we see the brothers doing it,  just like the scene in the first movie. she even walks though the scene in full cowgirl getup, which seemed a lot more forced then funny to me.

All blonds must look the same to me, because I guess she was in both Rambo and Punisher: Warzone, and I still feel like I've never seen her before.

I mean, one of the things I liked about the first one was that the "seeing the aftermath first and finding out what happened later" really worked, because first we have some dead bandaged Russian mobsters with pieces of a toilet around, or a room full of dead guys and a hole in the ceiling, some dead guys in a weird strip club place, and the entrance of the father character, which is mistaken for being six men. All of these scenes are interesting and have cool details that make them work. all the new scenes in the second movie lack this, and it makes them feel like a Chinese knockoffs.

This brings me to a theory I had way back when I found out about the first movie. A theory I had when I first heard that Duffy had no experience in film making and at one point was attached to Harvy Weinstien to have the movie produced. I had a theory that Duffy had a cool idea, and that professional help was brought in to develop the idea into a movie. That Duffy's script was treated by writers that knew what they were doing, and that when Duffy and Weinstien had a falling out, the script had already had the work done to it and Troy just took it, found some other filmmakers that could help him make the movie, and made it. Because there is nothing in the second movie that seems to look like it was written by the guy that wrote the first movie. Yeah there might be other reasons, like there was a lot of time between them, he might have had beginners luck, or he just forgot what it was that inspired him the first time, but yeah, its just a theory. the second movie just feels like when a kid has his older brother help him with a school project, and since the older brother knows what he's doing, the project turns out well. Then when the younger brother, felling confident from the success of the first project, goes in for round two, he looks back and just copies what he did on the first project, but it doesn't work this time since the one that made the first project so good is no longer involved.

The worst part of the movie is how unwatchable it is because everyone acts like a cartoon character. Clifton Collins Jr. plays a Mexican guy that cries a lot and says stupid shit the whole movie. The three detectives from the first movie really play up the fact that the movie has a fan following by winking at the camera and saying stupid shit the whole movie. And even Rocko from the first movie stops by in a scene about how gay society is or something like that. Even the mobsters that are after the brothers act like they came out of an Adam Sandler movie. Some of the characters were a little over the top in the first movie, but it feels too forced here, and becomes distracting after only 10 minutes.

Romeo "The Mexican Goofball" spends the whole movie trying to think of a cool catchphrase and ultimately comes up with "I LOVE Piñatas!"

Though the scenes with the brothers seem like rehash, and the rest of the characters are annoying, the father character, played by Scottish comedian Billy Connolly, best know for playing Billy Bones in Muppet Treasure Island, the best pirate movie ever, steals the movie with every scene he's in. In fact I feel like every scene that involved his character was very interesting, especially in contrast to the rest of the movie. The story itself very much revolves around his character, though he's not in it as much as he should be, and we are treated to Godfather II type flash backs every once in a while that tells the story of how he got to be such a badass. There's a scene that combines Russian roulette with that Mexican stand off "point your guns at each other" type action movie cliche that is far and away the coolest scene in any action movie I've seen in a while, let alone a movie that's more or less boring rehash from a movie that was never original to begin with. Its actually that one scene, and the father character that keeps the movie from being terrible in my mind. It also what makes the movie so unbalanced.

In the end I'd say the movie does a good job of dividing its audience further, since I'm sure the fans of the first one, who tend to be idiots, will like this movie, and the jerkoff snobs that dislike number 1 will very much dislike number 2. Its more of the same, in the worst way, and in ultimately a disappointment after all these years of waiting. Though to be completely honest, it's exactly what I was expecting. They should have just made an animated series.

5 out of 10