"That's a nice-a donut."
Thursday, July 06, 2006
The Boondock Saints (1999)
The Boondock Saints is a movie that was made during the tail end of the mid and late 1990s wave of hip indie-minded crime films, such as Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, The Usual Suspects, and Memento. Like many of those this was also a film with a relatively small budget aimed for a college-aged audience and prepped for plenty of violence and profanity, but of the fun and lightweight variety. But unlike those classics, director Troy Duffy's work fails miserably. It unwittingly manages to become a bore, even during scenes of what should be exciting and intense action. And it commits the ultimate movie sin: it is never fun or entertaining.
The story follows a pair of brothers from Boston, Massachusetts. One night, while having a good time in their local Irish pub, Connor (Sean Patrick Flanery) and Murphy (Norman Reedus) get in a fight and end up killing a couple guys who happen to be mobsters. Though an FBI agent (Willem Dafoe) is on the hunt for the perpetrators (them), the pair is held in fairly high esteem by many in the local media and from regular Joe's. But Connor and Murphy aren't done yet, as they have a spiritual awakening and come to believe that their mission is to start playing the role of vigilante enforcers against other bad men in the mafia.
The film makes allusions to Kitty Genovese, a famous murder victim who was attacked and killed near her home in New York in 1964 with much of her neighborhood watching. The witnesses figured that, well, somebody must have called the police. Connor and Murphy figure that they need to stop being bystanders like that, and to actually do something about the bad in the world.
Unfortunately, with a movie that has protagonists that are criminals, vigilantes, bad guys, heroes, or just general lowlifes (depending on how you view them), there needs to be a strong reason to care about them. Maybe they are good people at heart, or they are easy to identify with for one reason or another, or they have an intriguing past or interesting side story, or perhaps they are just very complex, unusual or memorable characters. With the Boondock Saints, you have none of these things. As much as they think they are, they aren't good, there is no character development to speak of so you can't identify with them or know anything about their past or their side life, and they really aren't all that interesting.
Much of the acting is B-level and quite over the top, including a very disappointing turn from Dafoe who is normally a very fine actor. Porn star Ron Jeremy is in here needlessly and the brother's acquaintance David Rocco is just plain annoying. The only real high points of the movie are Agent Smecker's gifted and detailed flashback accounts of what really happened at each crime scene. It's a good concept that, as with many films, doesn't pass muster upon execution. And in nowhere near the same league as the films it aspired to be.
The Verdict: D+.
Michael Bentley 3:33 PM
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