First and foremost, I FUCKING LOVE THIS MOVIE, so this review is going to be somewhat biased as its a film very dear to me. I first saw it around the year 2000 on a budget Cinema Club DVD that I picked up for a couple of quid in HMV. I Didn't really know much about it but Billy Connolly, one of my favourite stand up comedians, had a role in it. So that was a selling point. He'd previously starred in the period drama Mrs Brown with Judi Dench and the scottish gangster film, The Debt Collector, so I was well aware that he could do drama. I was also aware of Willem Defoe, this was years before I knew him from Streets Of Fire and Spider-man. I'd suffered through Speed 2: Cruise Control and found he was the only convincing performance in the whole movie.
This movie came at a time when I was discovering more and more movies. Looking at actors as actors and not as characters and searching out their bodies of work. So Defoe and Connolly were known to me so I was sold on the fact that these two actors could bring a bit of something extra to the film. I was not prepared for how much I would enjoy this film and how it became one of my defining late teens movies.
The film had an interesting start. The script by Troy Duffy, a Boston barman who thought he was the next Tarantino or Martin Scorsese. He wrote the script and it garnered the attention of disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein, who offered to produce the script. But Duffy had ideas above his station when it came to the casting of the film, insisting that Robert DeNiro be cast and due to other behind the scenes drama, including halving the budget, Miramax and Weinstein dropped the movie. However, the film would eventually get made albeit with a much smaller budget and a smaller cast thanks to some deal made with Franchise Pictures.
Anywho, with the new cast that included, Defoe, Billy Connolly, Carlo Rota, David Della Rocco and starring as the saints of the title, Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flannery as Murphy and Connor MacManus respectively, the film was released in a limited run in only 5 cinemas for just one week due to the horrific Columbine Massacre. Obviously this wasn't what Duffy wanted but like a lot of films of this ilk, The Boondock Saints became a word of mouth cult hit, garnering a dedicated and vocal fanbase in the wake of it's home video release. /If you want to find out more about the making of the film, I highly recommend watching the documentary Overnight. It give us an indepth look at the success and ultimate failure of one man's ego and the realities of the Hollywood system.
The film follows the two brother, Murphy and Connor who live in a rundown apartment in downtown Boston. Their home is a squalid, almost derelict building but they have a toilet and beds which is all they really need. Good Catholic boys too. They go to church and kiss the feet of Jesus. When they find out that their favourite pub is going to be forcefully purchased by some scummy Russian gangsters and get into a fight with them when they come to collect, accidentally killing them. They turn themselves in and released as local heroes. Believing they've been given a holy mission to rid Boston of it's criminal underbelly, they become vigilantes, executing the cities Mafia families and becoming local folk heroes in the process. On their trail is and eccentric FBI agent who finds that he's siding more with the saints and kind of starts helping them in their divine mission. Also on their trail in a hired Assassin, Ill Duce, an aging but ruthless killer who will seemingly stop at nothing to kill them or is there some other connection between the boys and Ill Duce?
Considering that for most of the 90s, crime cinema tried it's hardest to match or copy Tarantino's early career style. Every film wanted to be hip and cool from Get Shorty (95) to Things To Do In Denver When Your Dead (94) to smaller obscure films like Craig Hamann's Boogie Boy (98) and Jennifer Leitzes' action comedy Montana (98). They all tried so hard to be the next hip and cool gangster flick, and even though there is a trace amount of that in The Boondock Saints, this feels more inline with the vigilante movies of the 70s and 80s but Duffy gave it his own unique style while trying in vein to not be another Tarantino copycat which, to me is one of the reasons why Saints became such a cult hit.
Duffy's direction is what you would expect from someone with no film-making background, he shot the film with a stylised eye. It not a terribly shot film, not at all but a director with a bit more experience could have done a better job, that's not to say Duffy fucked the film up, far from it, it has it's own unique style and the cinematography by Adam Kane, shooting on 35mm film, looks good, it's probably Kane's best shot movie. He'd previously DOP'd some stinkers in the form of Hail Ceasar and The Skateboard Kid 2. In the hands of a more experienced director and DOP, the film could have looked incredible, but it has it's own unique charm to it which is why I think it stands out.
The cast all do a great job and Duffy's script is equal parts gripping, intense, funny, violent and above all else, pretty damn individual. Norman Reedus in a pre-Walking Dead and come to think of it, a Pre-Blade 2 role as Murphy and Sean Patrick Flannery as Connor, do a damn fine job in their roles, even if they're Irish accents are a tad off, bringing humour and fun as well as some drama to their characters and the back and fourth banter between them is what makes you care for and root for them.
Billy Connolly's performance as Ill Duce is equal parts menace and subtlety and he bring an air of the mysterious to the film, who is this guy? why is he so adept at killing and how fucking cool is that gun holster bulletproof vest? flat cap, beard, sunglasses, guns and stogies are the order of the day and Connolly nails it.
Defoe's FBI agent Paul Smecker is one gonzo bonkers performance. His role takes in everything from air conducting classical music while searching a bloody crime scene, his over enthusiastic recount or reconstruction of a bloody gunfights or his dressed in drag to infiltrate the mafia finale? Defoe goes buck-fucking-wild in the role and like Connolly, seems to be not just having fun but revelling in it too.
For me though the stand-out performance comes from David Della Rocco as Rocco, the best friend of the brothers and a low low low level bag boy for the local mafia family. He's just a joy to watch and this was his first film. He has such great chemistry with Reedus and Flannery and the camaraderie is beautiful. He also has some of the best quotes in the entire movie such as " I can't even by a pack of smokes without runnin' into 9 guys that you fucked" or "Wyatt Fuckin' Earp", these are just some examples but he did return, as well as the two brothers and Billy Connolly for Duffy's long awaited sequel, The Boondock Saint's 2: All Saints day in 2009 and gave an amazing monologue.
Even though he ego sank the original plan for the film, Troy Duffy eventually delivered a deliriously fun, low budget action comedy that have stayed with me for twenty years and it's one I will continue to watch over and over again. It's definitely deserving of its cult movie status and if you haven't seen it, don't go into the movie expecting a Tarantino rip off because The Boondock Saints is it's own beast entirely. It's a wonderfully nutty film with a cast of eccentric characters and a film that revels in excess but deep down is about brotherly love and trying to do go by doing bad. Like I said at the beginning of this review, I Fucking love this movie and The Boondock Saints gets a full blooded five stars from this guy.
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