Boondock Saints II

Some of you might know that The Boondock Saints is my least favorite movie of all time.

In case, you didn't know, the reasoning is obvious: it sucks with every bone in its body. But to be more specific, since I like writing about HOW ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE THIS MOVIE IS:

1) I was told how great this was. I read about its massive cult and started getting excited, because... you know, some cult movies are cool. I even read a few articles about the "questions" and "ideas" raised by the film... nothing too specific, but enough to get me to think for at least a split second that there was a modicum of substance to this film. Which was of course terribly off track, but the fact that it was so massively hyped for me is key because it means people like this movie. Which makes me hate it even more.

2) The pacing is absolutely horrid. Someone got the great idea that showing the aftermath and having the detectives solve everything BEFORE showing all the massive bloodletting was super cool and innovative. What actually happened was that it revealed that the bad guys died, then decided to show the bad guys dying... only for the viewer to realize that nothing interesting actually happened. Whoops.

3) Oh, it tries so hard to emulate the Quentin Tarantino brand of "cool". It tries so hard. It even lifts bits directly from Pulp Fiction (the accidental shooting of the cat, spouting Biblical verses while making the kill, etc), so it has to capture some of that "cool", right? Except that Tarantino actually possesses the gift of clever dialogue. And he takes that style of his, where he lifts something from another movie and puts his own spin on it, and makes it work within the framework of his catalogue.

...needless to say, Troy Duffy does not possess any sort of talent like this.

4) Oh, and so confident Duffy is in his auteurist abilities that he decides that he's going to fill his film with music that HE CREATED. Which, unexpectedly, sucks donkey balls.

But that's not the worst part: it's the idea that he'd put his crappy music in the movie. And the idea that he'd put his stupid friend in the movie because he thought he was funny or whatever. It means he's an egotistical blowhard that believes that all he touches is gold and that all that he deems worthy is actually so. Which is terrible enough, but throw in a bit of frat douchiness, and you've got a person worthy of my hatred.

5) But the REASON ABOVE ALL REASONS why I hate it is this: it truly believes that killing is justified if done to combat against evil, and it truly believes it's making an insightful and intriguing case for that.

For the former, it isn't, and for the latter, it sure as hell is not.

Usually violence in film doesn't bother me, because it's all meant to be escapist fare and nothing you actually want to aspire towards. But here it's almost disturbing because it actually believes in the bloodbaths, and essentially states that if everyone was man enough we'd just go ahead and take down all the evildoers that infest this world.

Except that a lot of people find it kind of hard to be perfect. And gee, there goes the Saints executing those guys at the strip for their wee little sin.

And so the line between good and evil is a little blurred, and having two guys using their faith to justify killing... well, it begins to sound a little like some religious extremists we might not be particularly fond of, doesn't it? Oh, and this film has a cult following, which although probably means nothing, still seems a little unsettling.

But whatever. All of that would be... well, it'd be at least a little bit more digestable if there was a shred of evidence that this ultra pro-vigilantism stance was all meant tongue in cheek. Of course, it wasn't, as you can see when it ends the movie with some man on the street "interviews" asking if these guys are actually Saints or not. You know, so you know that this film is asking the hard questions, taking the unbiased side and letting us look at the facts objectively to allow us to make our own decisions. Which is all bullshit, of course.

...

Anyway, I've written a LOT about the first movie when I originally set out to write about the new one (which just came out on DVD, for the record). And one might be wondering why exactly I'm watching the sequel when the first one inspires so much hatred within me. Well, as the old saying goes... "keep your friends close, and your enemies closer." Which means that this franchise (which I guess it is now) is my enemy. Strangely enough, that doesn't seem weird to say.

I figured that it'd be terrible, it being a sequel and all. But could it be... *worse* than the first one, which I'll remind you once again is my vote for WORST OF ALL TIME?

Well... yes and no.

Perhaps the worst quality about the sequel is that it's all pretty much more of the same, except tied together with a much more nonsensical storyline (which I have no intentions of even trying to describe). REHASHED FROM THE LAST MOVIE:

-Super unrealistic gun fights that is filmed in slow motion soas to make the Saints look as cool as possible.

-Super annoying sidekick, except replacing the worst actor of all time friend of Troy Duffy is a gross stereotype of a Mexican. Presumably played for laughs.

-Super "funny" homophobic cracks serving as the basis for much of the humor. (I don't actually remember this from the first one, but I'm just going to go ahead and assume that it was there in spades.)

-Super over-the-top intelligent detective, except replacing the flamboyant gay Willem Dafoe is a cowgirl. (Oh, spoiler alert, but one of my favorite parts from this movie is when it's revealed that Dafoe's character died... until we realize that he actually didn't. What happened? WHO THE HELL KNOWS.)

-Super obvious ripoff from better movies. Although instead of ripping off Pulp Fiction, Troy Duffy popped in a DVD of The Godfather Part II and decided to insert a "rise of the father" subplot... which doesn't exactly work because The Godfather's story followed the rise of Vito Corleone, where this movie followed the rise of some guy who likes to shoot people.

So yeah. It was bad. Did I mention it makes little sense? Not that you'd expect it to be densely plotted, since it's main purpose is to make two "righteous" killers look cool. And yet the film managed to get something terribly right: the omission of the first's innate ability to inspire overwhelming hatred.

Essentially, this film paints the Saints as your stereotypical action movie stars, which is much more palatable than painting them as servants of God delivering the good news in the form of bullets in mobsters' heads. And aside from a very ill-conceived fantasy scene involving the worst character from the first movie (where it rails against masculinity as defined as anything but drinking and smoking and kicking ass or whatever), it avoids hitting you over the head with a terribly misguided message. Which is a good thing. A very good thing.

Oh, and thankfully, the music in the movie is NOT by Troy Duffy. It still sucks, but you know... small improvements are still improvements.

So in an attempt to reach some sort of conclusion... Boondock Saints II = worse in pretty much every way except in the fact that it inspires ambivalence rather than anger. Which is what is required to take a really bad movie and make it one of the worst movies ever. I'd probably put The Boondock Saints II in my top 10 of least favorite films, but honestly it only gets there due to its association with the first movie.

Although I can't really decide if the fact that it doesn't acheive the same heights of wretchedness as the first one means that the sequel was a success or a disappointment.