The Boondock Saints (1999): C-

Troy Duffy’s The Boondock Saints was, as history tells it, enthusiastically acquired by Miramax and then, once push came to shove over production disagreements, dropped like a stone. It was a deserved fate, considering that this dim-witted, aesthetically clunky Tarantino clone prizes glib violence, rank misogyny and even-ranker homophobia in the service of “edginess.” In Boston, brothers Connor (Sean Patrick Flanery) and Murphy McManus (Norman Reedus) decide, on what seems like a whim, to ditch their meat-packing jobs – perhaps because they’re tired of punching out manly women, as they do in an intro sequence? –  in order to become righteous vigilantes. Their targets are local mafioso, and their enterprise comes to include the participation of a spazzy mob bagman named “Funny Man’ (David Della Rocco). Despite all the boozing, caressing of firearms, and meaningless window-dressing prayers spoken right before they execute their victims, there’s no energy to the proceedings, which are clumsily doused in slow-motion and edited with awkward, bewildering fades. The McManus brothers’ murderous rampage is glorified with such gleeful abandon that it’s either embarrassing or laughable (or both), while Willem Dafoe flounders badly trying to make wine out of urine from a homosexual detective role that calls for him to flamboyantly prance about and slander other gay men as “fags.” A coda, in which (phony) man-on-the-street TV news interviews find a public split over the virtuousness of the McManus’ actions, feigns interest in the issue of vigilantism with such straightfaced seriousness, it’s borderline-insulting.

Comments

[Tobi Ximénez]

Judging from your review, it sounds more like you think of it as a solid D minus rating? I don't know how BDS ever got any kind of cult following, boggles the mind actually, it's clearly a turd marinated in mediocrity.

Anyway, thank you for articulating my problems with the picture almost perfectly Nick. You're one the best writers on film in the States, keep up the great work man

cheers