Sunday 18 April 2010

'Ding dong motherfucker... ding dong!'



The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day
Dir. Troy Duffy
(Apparition 2009)

A hollow rehash of it's predecessor.

Back with the MacManus brothers is a painful watch second time round. The film is riddled with problems: no story, no Willem Defoe, a surreal performance from Peter Fonda bringing new deplorable depths to Italian accents. The pace feels laboured and at over two hours long, you are itching for the film to end. I could not tell you the plot – even for a suitcase full of money, a gun to my head, I still couldn't tell you. The best I can do: it's about the MacManus brothers returning to Boston. The Boondock Saints (1999) was very rock n'roll: beer, pizza, Rocco, Defoe and great gun montages lavished with spiralling guitar solos. Defoe as the detective was crazy. All Saints Day is turtle slow, the frames feel cheap – day time television is better. The brothers 10 years older, Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus, look has been's, tubby and worn, not lean and mean as they were 10 years back. At least you can take from the film what bad acting is, here we have it in bucket loads each Thespian seems to be waiting for a prompt either with their dialogue or action- there is no spontaneity – every scene feels staged and directed. Surely Billy Connolly showed up just for his fee. The shoot outs are monotonous, guys shaking their hips and falling to ground when taking lead. We are always on a close up on guys emptying rounds – there is no dynamic camera moment, or attempts to heighten the tension/action or tell the story. A very tedious affair, stick with the MacManus brothers back in 1999 when justice was served with Irish swagger.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The silver lining to the whole project being Clifton Collins Jr's performance as Romeo, the mexican wannabe hitman, who really stole the show.