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The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day
Julie Benz and Clifton Collins Jr. share a quiet moment in "The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day." Sony Picture Studios
By MICHAEL SMITH World Scene Writer
Published: 11/27/2009 2:20 AM
Last Modified: 11/27/2009 4:42 AM
Filled with cartoon violence, locker-room dialogue and Looney Tunes humor, "The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day" is an Irish-mob vengeance flick that plays something like "The Departed" meets "The Bugs Bunny Show."
This is a movie made by a guy who's seen a lot of movies, especially gangster, vigilante and shootout films. From the Mexican standoff to Charles Bronson's squint to "Dirty Harry's" oversized guns to "Desperado" pistol-in-each-hand stylized gunfire, all manner of magnum silliness finds a home in this male valentine to rampage cinema.
The movie is at turns pointless outside of its hyper-violent set pieces and cleverness in how they are constructed. It is something of a symphony of gratuitous brutality. So it's just like the original "Boondock Saints," a 1999 release also written and directed by Troy Duffy. His first movie bombed in a handful of theaters, but in the last decade it has become something of a cult favorite on home video.
This somehow equated to a need for Duffy's second film a decade later, a follow-up to the original, which isn't all that original in the way that it thieves from Quentin Tarantino scenes and Guy Ritchie tough-guy theatrics.
Sean Patrick Flanery (the "Young Indiana Jones" star from the early 1990s) and Norman Reedus return to portray Connor and Murphy McManus, a pair of Irish-Catholic twins. In the first film, after they eliminate mobsters in self-defense and become hometown heroes, they undertake a mission to clean up evil (read: execute mob guys) in their hometown of Boston.
This action is in response to an apparent vision from God, and in the new film, the brothers still recite Scripture before putting down their prey.
The vigilantes are cooling their heels in Ireland when someone pulls them back home, whacking their beloved priest back in Boston. What happens next — and after that, ad nauseum — is a predictable series of vengeance shootouts you've seen in other movies.
Which is exactly Duffy's scheme as a filmmaker. He wants male viewers to recall action flicks of the past, then he pumps up the volume (electronica accompanies extended scenes of destruction) and relish the familiarity for the sake of humor.
"You didn't get this plan from a movie, did you?" one McManus boy asks of the other, as they pilot scaffolding down the outside of a high-rise building. "From 'The Eiger Sanction,' yeah," the brother admits, sheepishly, before adding "and it worked brilliantly for Clint Eastwood."
There is a hint of a story about men's legacies, and their propensity to build things and correspondingly tear things down, whether that be families, businesses or buildings. Make no mistake: This is a film for men, about men and by men. Or boys.
"All Saints Day" smacks of adolescents building a fort for a firefight, but having a camcorder and the necessary budget to make their own guns-a-blazin' flick.
Which would of course include a (expletive)-load of crude putdowns, questioning one another's manliness.
And don't forget hideouts. And flatulence. And slow-motion death scenes. And room for one woman, who will be treated as a Barbie doll to be sexualized, but who will likely be the smartest one in the room. Julie Benz is excellent in that role here.
You can find all of these boy-toy excesses in "The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day."
THE BOONDOCK SAINTS II: ALL SAINTS DAY
Stars:
Sean Patrick Flanery,
Norman Reedus, Billy Connolly,
Julie Benz
Theater:
AMC Southroads
20
Running time:
1 hour, 58
minutes
Rated:
R (bloody violence,
language, some nudity)
Quality:
 (on a scale of
zero to four stars)
Michael Smith 581-8479
michael.smith@tulsaworld.com
By MICHAEL SMITH World Scene Writer
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