Boondock Saint 2: All Saint's Day

Well kids, it’s sequel time again! And guess what? I give up. I have to. There is nothing left these last few years that really makes me feel that the action genre has anything going for it anymore, and I’m extremely sad about that. I mean it’s always been a larger ratio of crap to anything actually good, but now the numbers have just gotten worse. Right off the bat I’m going to have to say this, I know this review is going to get me a lot of negative feed back, but facts are facts people and the fact is that I never really cared for “The Boondock Saints”. I didn’t hate it, I just didn’t find it that interesting, well more I didn’t find it good or interesting after a second viewing. A lot of the jokes fell flat even the first time, the action sequences were mostly ripped off and dull, and really, the whole movie was just mediocre, but I did get some enjoyment out of it. It had Willem Defoe and that alone usually makes things a lot of fun with some nicely over the top moments. I seem to be a little bit in a minority on this one however. A lot of people loves this movie like it’s “Pulp Fiction” or “Reservoir Dogs” but I really just found it forgettable. Yet it was still popular enough that 10 years later, we got a sequel, from the same writer and director, who hasn’t done anything else in the meantime, at all.
And what do we get for our 10 year wait? Is it a new, totally different story that fleshes out the characters and adds new drama? Nope, it’s the same movie. It really gets me worried when a man that has only directed one movie, comes back with a sequel that is the same movie again with only the slightest of differences. It really just emphasizes the fact that this guy only has one story in him, and it is really reflected in the script for this movie. The plot is the Saints have to return to American after hiding out in Ireland, to avenge a priest that is murdered by a hit man hired by the son of the gangster that they executed at the end of the first movie (sorry for the spoiler, but it was unavoidable). The rest is the exact same situations as the first film! Any of the writing gripes I had with the first movie, I could usually forgive, it was Troy Duffy’s first movie and in my opinion, when it’s your first movie you can get some leeway. Here is just a pure example of absolutely no effort at all. The dialogue is trying way too hard to be like early Quentin Tarantino, the big plot points happen at exactly the same time in this as they do in the original, and to top it all there is a character that was killed off in the original that is just replaced here. I’m not even kidding. They just get a guy, played by a different actor, to do exactly the same part from the first movie. Words really escape me here. I’ve complained about sequels just being carbon copies like the “Final Destination” sequels, but at least they tried a whole new cast when they re-did those movies, here it just brings more attention to the fact that they had no new ideas.
That and the performances are just ridiculous. The returning cast has no real endearing factors to me really. The Saints, Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flannery respectively, are just annoying and really, in this movie they are quite unsympathetic. In the first film, I will admit that I felt all their actions were pretty much justified. They legitimately took down bad people. In this movie, really no one they kill is seen doing anything that is plainly cruel or evil, other than wanting to kill them for killing someone else. So it just feels like the Saints are just killing people that are just marginally associated with the gangsters, mostly because that’s all they kill until the end where they actually do what they should have done the whole movie instead of getting drunk. Plus, did I mention they were annoying? They get drunk and make fun of people for like two thirds of the movie! Fine, I’ll buy that, I’ll get past that. What grinds my nerves is when they just seem to do that more than hunt down criminals, which they are constantly saying is their whole mission and purpose. Seriously, if you want a story about Anti-heroes you can’t just have them do nothing and then have them kill people and expect the audience to be rooting for them, they have to be killing people that are pretty much filth.
The Saint aren’t my biggest bone to pick with this movie though, that dubious honor goes to none other than “Dexter” leading lady Julie Benz, who plays the replacement Willem Dafoe here, and is just so grating that I can’t adequately find words to describe it. She is so balls achingly irritating that I had to stop the movie a couple times to do something other than watch her keep going. The odd thing? I love her on that show! Seriously she is so much better than this part! I’m sure she did it for career purposes or she was a fan of the original, but that honestly doesn’t excuse it. She is just a clone of the same exact part, she’s just trying to do the same character from the first movie. Right down to the re-enactments and banter with the local cops, it’s the same goddamn person! And I haven’t even started with the clone of the Mexican guy. I don’t even feel like giving him much mention, mostly because I think the actor that plays him is just going through the motions because he’s clearly aware that his part only exists to replace the guy from the first movie. All these people are just fucking pointless!
Then there are the action sequences, oh god if you could only call them that. This movie’s idea of action is mostly just guns going off. That’s all you really see. There’s no actually movement, or anything else to give the scene depth or excitement, not even shaky cam and god did I never think I’d actually wish for that. Troy Duffy just seems to think a gun going off is enough. You know what? I could almost buy this, the idea that something as simple as pulling a trigger on a gun and being able to actually end someone’s life is very intimidating. The problem is the rest of the movie seems to celebrate the idea of killing people with the cover of the Saints’ actions being “noble”, and the slight over the top nature of the violence just totally ruins any chance of that idea. Which is huge shame because they actually try to build that idea up through out, mostly in useless flashbacks from the father character, I guess feeling remorseful about the fact he’s killed so many people. But in the next scene we see the Saints killing people and it’s supposed to be cool and the message is just destroyed. The hypocrisy and constant shifts between timelines, slow and fast motion, ultimately makes these scenes just boring.
And that’s basically this movie in a nut shell, it’s just boring. It goes nowhere, it takes way too long to get there, and on top of that, it’s been done before. Basically I should have just watched the first movie again, maybe really drunk or high and I probably would have liked it more than seeing this “new” movie. It’s a dull, run of the mill sequel that really should never have been made, and it pains me to know that I wasted two hours of my life just sitting through it.