The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day

Rarely does a movie, book, or game contain a subtitle that can stand alone as the name of a holiday, and it only seemed fitting right from the moment I purchased Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day back in March to wait eight months to watch it on the actual All Saints' Day. Now, fulfillment of that gimmick aside, there was really no reason for me to watch this movie (or any other movie) last night. I was tired and my girlfriend was a little bit sick and all signs were pointing straight to "early bedtime for all." Instead, I stubbornly attempted to get through this two-hour movie and fell asleep for about fifteen minutes early on, forcing me to re-watch half of the movie after finishing it just to make sure I hadn't missed anything of note, only further delaying bedtime. Not my best "weeknight free time" decision. Anyway, let's discuss Boondock Saints II, which we can only do by revisiting the original 1999 movie. For those of you who never saw it or can't remember, Boondock Saints was a low-budget independent film about two blue collar Irish-born brothers living in Boston who turned into a pair of vigilantes after killing two Russian mobsters in self-defense. They then methodically took down the Russian mob with their wise-cracking friend while being pursued and later aided by a gay federal agent. The movie was a failure both critically (17% on Rotten Tomatoes) and at the box office (grossing less than $250 thousand worldwide) before defying all expectations by becoming a home video cult classic, grossing $50 million in DVD and VHS sales. I first saw the film in what must have been 2003 or 2004 and, along with several friends, enjoyed it, and eagerly anticipated its rumored sequel. Seriously, there was an IMDb page for a "Boondock Saints 2" for the better half of a decade. It was the Arrested Development movie back when Arrested Development was still on the air. And by the time the movie became a reality in 2009, the same peer group that was dying for it in early high school was now ready to graduate college, and if I may speak for all of the fans of the original for a moment, we simply no longer cared. (In hindsight, maybe The Departed fulfilled everyone's desire to see another Boston-based crime movie.) Regardless, I always did have interest in seeing this follow-up, even if I knew it couldn't live up to the original simply by virtue of the fact that I had expectations going in this time. To its credit though, this sequel did everything it could to be the exact same movie as its ten-year-old predecessor. Rather than trying to up the stakes, it spent two hours showing the same two brothers murdering criminals associated with the same Russian mob family. They were once again aided by a (different) wise-cracking friend and were once again pursued by a (female, not gay) federal agent, who once again decided to help rather than hinder the brothers. And there were plenty of Mexican standoffs and action-filled crime scene reconstructions and all in all it really did feel like a two-hour extension of the original movie. Unfortunately, as I had known it wouldn't all along, it just didn't make an impact or resonate the way the original film did. The first Boondock Saints is an interesting and entertaining movie because of the firefights and unique characters, but it's also a philosophical movie that asks - even if a bit too bluntly - whether or not vigilantism is a good thing. On the one hand, the brothers are cleaning up the scum that seeps through the legal system. On the other, they're engaging in criminal activity themselves and can very fairly be compared to terrorists. Boondock Saints II by contrast features next to no reflection on the morality of the protagonists. They start the film, spend the film, and end the film as vigilantes who have both fans and detractors, and that's all there is to it. Rumor has it (again!) that there may end up being a third Boondock Saints installment, perhaps in the form of a TV miniseries. I'd watch it if it got made, but I'd also hope for some sort of deeper conflict beyond "brothers vs. lawmen" and "brothers vs. criminals." Not necessarily "brother vs. brother," since one of the most touching parts about the "Saints" is their unwavering brotherly love, but what about "brothers vs. equally morally righteous person who takes issue with their vigilantism?" What about "brothers vs. selves, finding it harder and harder to live with their ever-increasing kill count?" There are still intriguing places to go with a third movie. Of course, even if it happens, it'll probably just be another two hours of fan-service, another two hours of firefights and interesting characters. I guess I'm okay with that, too.