Arnold
CibbuanoBoondock Saints
August 25th 2006 04:27
Boondock Saints (1999)
A straight-to-video 'sleeper' hit that seems to have spawned a sequel. I don't know where to start... oh wait, yes I do - it's shit.
I'll get the good points out of the way first. It has Ron Jeremy in it as a mafia underboss. Willem Dafoe manages to come out of it still looking fairly good. The direction includes the odd neat idea and cool set-piece. David Della Rocco as 'Rocco' is pretty good in what (on inspection of IMDB.com) appears to be his only role ever. And that's it.
First off, the two leads (Flannery and Reedus) are overly dramatic and over-the-top. They're dickheads, not once did I like them. The film itself stretches believability in insane ways, and it seeks to make it's characters far cooler than they deserve to be. The setup is poor as all fuck, little explanation is given to where the two protagonists come from. It stretches credibility immensely for these two to come out of nowhere as fully-formed hard cases who speak every language under the sun. It just screams out 'look at us we're cool!' FUCK OFF. The writing is far too self-conscious, especially in the inclusion of a 'cool' gay detective (Dafoe). OH, HE'S SO COOL - HE'S GAY AND HE CALLS OTHER GAYS 'FAGGOTS' LIKE A TOUGH GUY!
The previously mentioned neat ideas and cool set-pieces are drowned out by the many lesser 'parts'. The regular flashbacks in the story structure don't really work, the director seems to lack any understanding of story-telling dynamics - he takes any possibility of tension out of it by coming at the story from two different sides. I think it's a fair guess that the only point of the flashbacks was to seem 'cool' and Tarantino-like. Once again, FUCK OFF. Oh yeah, and Billy Connelly turns up too, but it's a missed opportunity, instead of getting a cross between Keyser Soze and Hannibal Lector (as it seems to set up), we get what amounts to a pointless and empty cameo that serves only as a 'what the fuck?!' moment. Like I even cared by that point. And, to top it all off, there's even a sort of childish moral justification at the end - an overly simplistic and casual attitude to murder/capitol punishment that fails to reinforce any point the film may or may not have been making.
Don't watch it, it sucks. It isn't even big dumb fun.
LOWPOINTS: Willem Dafoe's gay detective seems to orgasm whilst 'brilliantly' retracing the footsteps of the two 'heroes'. Lame.
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