Boondock Saints, The - 4/5

"Now, you Irish cops are perking up. That's two sound theories in one day, neither of which deal with abnormally sized men. Kind of makes me feel like River dancing." --Smecker

When I first saw "The Boondock Saints" back in the day, I instantly fell in love with it. It was an American Guy Ritchie style movie, about underground dealings, mob wars, and of course self righteous Irish brothers whom decide to deal justice in their own way. The movie is quirky, vulgar, and instantly charming. It's hard not to fall in love with it.

Now some decade later, I recently watched the Blu Ray version of the film and found that despite its charm this film is slightly flawed. Of course, I still massively enjoy the film. I enjoy its insanely smart Tarantino-esque dialogue and randomness of characters. I enjoy the great acting of all people (although Dafoe still steals this movie for me and had he not been in it, this might have been more along the lines of an 'okay' film) and I enjoy the cleverness of the action sequences (as told by Dafoe's character Smecker). The characters are instantly charming and so is the tale of vigilante justice in the name of God - whether you agree with the means or not. And I'm always down with some good old fashioned gun toting violence in my movies.

But upon my recent viewing I discovered that not is all green in the land of Oz. I find that I disagree with Troy Duffy's choice of pacing and some of the structuring of the film. I know that the film is already well over 2 hours but I seriously could have used another half hour or hour of script depth and structuring changes. I just seemed to 'jump' a bit too much for my tastes. For example, I felt that Smecker, as a character is left hanging - he reaches an epiphany towards the end but it never pays off. We get nothing from the rest of him at the end of the film. It just jumps to 3 months later randomly at the end and leaves the whole situation unfinished. So suddenly Il Duce changes up and there is no repercussions...seems a little like they were just trying to wrap it up quickly by the end and I felt a little left out.

In the end though, this is still a very good film and I admire its tenacity of film making. It deals with issues bigger than the story itself which is nice and I can't argue with how charming it is. I'll be damned if this isn't one of the most charming films to come out in the last 20 years. And for that, it makes up for most of its flaws. 

Written By Matt Reifschneider