The year 1999 is commonly regarded as the greatest year of cinema in recent memory. This was the year of The Matrix, Toy Story 2, The Sixth Sense, the first Star Wars prequel and several other films that changed the medium forever. It was also the year of such cult classics as The Blair Witch Project, eXistenZ, Galaxy Quest and The Iron Giant. However, all of those movies were to some degree lauded by critics. The Boondock Saints, also released in 1999, was not. Nevertheless, this film has reached a cult following on home video, quite probably due to regular screenings on St. Patrick’s Day.
The Boondock Saints is about two Irish brothers (played by Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus) who go on a killing spree against mobsters in Boston. They aren’t interested in fame or money, they just don’t like mobsters very much. They’re nothing more than a couple of guys who got pushed around by criminals until they decided to take up vigilantism.
It should be easy to hate the MacManus brothers, just on the basis of their occupation and their motivations. Still, there is something undeniably satisfying in watching these two work. Their chemistry is amazing and they both seem deceptively intelligent. There’s just no other way to say it: These guys are cool. They’re strong enough to be entertaining leads, charming enough to be sympathetic (perhaps in spite of ourselves) and flawed enough to provide some small level of nuance. It also helps that the film tries to preserve some moral ambiguity about their actions. Then again, that ambiguity also works against the movie, but I’ll get back to that later.
Willem Dafoe is also in this film, practically stealing the whole damn show as the FBI agent tracking the Saints. Dafoe is in full scenery-chewing mode here, delivering a detective who’s far more capable than the incompetent local police and never misses a chance to say so in the most demeaning way possible. The movie shows Agent Smecker inspecting several crime scenes and its a joy to watch him at every one. However, he does make a few rather crucial choices near the end that seem inexplicably out of character. Also, Smecker’s homosexuality was played for a bit too much humor. Dafoe even cross-dresses late in the narrative, which I’d probably find more disgusting if I hadn’t seen what he went through in Antichrist.
The cinematography is serviceable, but the editing is very scatter-shot. There are several times — especially during the opening credits — when the film doesn’t seem to know which scene it wants to be in. Furthermore, the end of the film goes on much longer than it really should. In between, the film is littered with redundant scenes, overlong shots and awkward transitions. On the other hand, the editing really clicks during those sequences when Smecker is going through a crime scene. In these sequences, the gunfights are slowly revealed to us in some clever, varied and energetic ways that mesh perfectly with Dafoe’s performance. The gunfights themselves, however, can range from average to poor. Easily the worst of them comes when the Saints take on a notorious mob hitman. They’re unloading one clip after another, unobstructed, in broad daylight, standing totally still at near point-blank range, and yet no one ever lands a fatal hit. FAIL.
The writing is mediocre. The characterization is solid enough, but any film that has to introduce its characters through obtrusive title cards will not get any points for good storytelling. By far the most prominent feature of the screenplay is its comedy, which is easily the film’s primary love it/hate it fulcrum. A Russian thug gets killed by a falling toilet. Ron Jeremy has a sleazy supporting role. This movie is loaded with comedy that’s cheesy, campy, self-referential, and — in more than a few cases, I’m sure — unintentional. Furthermore, the filmmakers seemed to go out of their way to offend Hispanics, Russians, Italians, African-Americans, gay people, animal rights activists and any other minorities within reach. Though I can appreciate a boldly non-PC approach to humor, the “shock jokes” were played up to an almost juvenile extent.
Basically put, the word for this movie is “unfocused.” This can easily be seen in the editing with a short attention span and in the humor that goes after everyone because they filmmakers didn’t know who to go after in particular. Even the religious references are very conflicted, as the Irish assassins chant a Catholic prayer… and then put pennies on the eyes of their victims, as per Greek mythology. WTF?
It’s obvious that this film was made with the deeper theme of vigilantism in mind, but the filmmakers can’t even make up their mind about that. The entire ending credits sequence is dedicated to debating the pros and cons of citizens taking the law into their own hands, but no final opinion is given. In any other movie, I’d respect this even-handed and ambiguous approach. This film, however, shows such an uncertainty in everything that I’d have respected it a lot more if it showed some amount of conviction in this, its most relevant theme.
There’s a lot to like in The Boondock Saints, yet it’s easy to get aggravated with how mediocre it is. Everything about this film — the acting, the writing, the visuals, the humor, the themes — is very hit-and-miss. This was writer/director Troy Duffy’s only film (save for the 2009 sequel), which helps to make even the quality of this film uncertain: It’s quite visibly not good enough to be a professional production, yet it’s way better than most other amateur pictures.
This is a film that can easily be loved or hated in equal measure and for the exact same reasons. When it’s good, it’s great. When it’s bad, it’s the enjoyable kind of bad. In short, this is the stuff that cult classics are made of.