So I decided to check out The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day last night with a few friends (a few of which had already seen it). But despite the fact that I loved the original movie, I wasn't too psyched up for it. First of all, I re-watched the first movie recently and though I still liked it, it didn't quite hold up over the years. Plus, I heard a good chunk of critics tear the movie apart. Yeah yeah, I hate critics as much as the next guy (despite me practically being an unpaid one) but a good chunk of the critics that matter were actually fans of the original and thought the sequel wasn't all that great. The chief complaint among them was the fact that we basically waited ten years for a carbon copy of the first movie and I actually tend to agree with that sentiment. But that doesn't mean the movie isn't any good.
For those not privy to the storyline, the Saints are a pair of Irish brothers who take it upon themselves to become vigilantes in the name of the Lord. After the events of the first movie and a self-imposed exile to the homeland, a copycat killer draws them out of hiding and gets them shipping back to Boston. On the way back, they come across a cocky Mexican who becomes their sidekick while the authorities (who may or may not be on the side of the Saints) try to figure out what's going on. Of course, that's a really brief summary but there's a few other things that I'd rather get into.
First of all, the cast doesn't seem so much like a cast of characters than a random assemblage of borderline-offensive stereotypes. We have the Irish, Italians, Mexicans, Bostonians and Southerners, only really missing the Russians and gay people of the first film. There are hardly any plain white-bread people in this movie and, come to think of it, I don't think I remember any black people in it either. Of course, you could play the diversity card or call the movie a "melting pot" but when you have Italians pouring marinara sauce in the pot while the Mexicans dip their tacos in it, that's just being a victim of poor characterization. Thankfully the actors do a decent job pulling it off their respective characters, even if they do go over the top at times.
The MacManus brothers (played by Sean Patrick Flannery and Norman Reedus) are pretty much unchanged from the first movie beyond the wear and tear of the past 10 years. Their new sidekick Romeo (played by Clifton Collins Jr.) pretty much replaces Rocco from the first film as the comic relief and, in my opinion, actually does a better job of it than Rocco did. Rocco's schtick of stringing together as many curse words as possible into a run-on sentence got old after a while but, despite being possibly the most blatant of Mexican stereotypes, Romeo is just plain funnier and I've admired Collins' willingness to go over the top in what little else I've seen him in. But fear not Rocco fans as he does show up in a dream to inspire the Saints to continue and does a better job than in the original. Special Agent Eunice Bloom (played by Julie Benz) is serviceable as the protege of Agent Paul Smecker from the first film but her part falls short in two aspects. First, she's pretty much playing the exact same role as Smecker (replacing a sassy gay man who solves crimes while listening to an iPod with a sassy Southern woman who solves crimes while listening to an iPod) and secondly, she has to follow up Willem Dafoe's performance from the first film. That doesn't mean she sucks, it just means she's not as awesome as Willem Dafoe. And who is, really? But hey, at least she was good to look at, am I right? In a kinda-touching note, the three cops who are a part of the whole investigation reprise their roles from the first film, not missing a beat. Judd Nelson does a pretty good job as a Mafia boss but once you figure out that there's a bigger bad guy behind it all, he's cast aside pretty quick, which is kinda the same.
So, if everyone did their jobs just fine, what am I complaining about? Really, All Saints Day is pretty much the same movie as the first one, with a few changes. You could just say it's about Irish guys shooting Italians and get it done with. But the big shoot-out scene in the middle of the movie where the gang descends on the Mafia hide-out felt like three scenes of the movie wrapped into one giant scene, between the arguing about the rope, the resulting shootout of that film and Special Agent Bloom's willingness to insert her apparently ghostly self into her versions of shootouts, much like Agent Smecker did in the first film. And at other times, the movie seemed to be a parody of the first movie. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of funny moments and quotable lines but, to me at least, it seemed like the movie was trying too hard to play up to the fans when just the fact it was getting a decent sequel would be enough for us. Say what you want about director Troy Duffy, whether you think he's an asshole or a hack or whatever, but the original succeeded because there was some heart underneath the gruff exterior. With this movie, it just seemed like this was the movie he wanted to make the first time just because he had more money. At certain points, there were so many bullets flying in slow-motion that I thought I was watching The Matrix. In my opinion, I view it much like Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2, where the sequel feels like a follow-up and a remake at the same time. And much like Evil Dead, I prefer the first movie for its willingness to succeed despite the setbacks. That doesn't mean I don't like the second one, though. And for those saying that the second movie was an homage to the first, I see the first movie as an homage to the low-budget Tarantino-esque crime flicks of the '90s, so I have trouble seeing All Saints Day as an homage to an homage.
So let's just say that if I give the original Boondock Saints a B+, then lets give All Saints Day a B-. It's flashy, it's violent, it's got a bit of a potty-mouth, but I don't really feel it like I did with the original. In the end, All Saints Day could be summed up with a quote from the movie. When the Saints are in an elevator preparing for a shootout, one of them says "Let's do some gratuitous violence". Anyone expecting All Saints Day to be anything more than that are only kidding themselves. In fact, I think the movie should've been called Boondock Saints 2: Let's Do Some Gratiutous Violence. Luckily for me, I enjoy gratuitous violence quite a bit.
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