THE BOONDOCK SAINTS (1999) Never has vigilantism seemed so harmless! The Boondock Saints is a movie so gleefully, assuredly in full support of vigilante violence that I can't really tell if it's meant as parody. By the end of the movie, seemingly the whole world is on board the crusade. There's some mild subtext about how the tolerance of this sort of violence can be equated with what happened to Kitty Genovese (stabbed, lotsa people watched, nobody did anything to help), but so little is done with it that it only serves to make the movie as a whole less fun for those of us who remember it. TBS starts out all right, with Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flannery as brothers with matching neck tattoos. They sit through a sermon at church where the priest laments the indifference of good men, using Genovese as an example, and then they apparently lose patience and leave before he's done. They're light-hearted, banter-trading guys who can handle themselves in a fistfight but don't go seeking them out, always willing to buy you a pint of Guinness - they're right out of the Irish stereotype factory, but Reedus and Flannery do a good job with them. They work at a slaughterhouse and are get in a fistfight with a giant woman who is driven into a killing frenzy because they didn't know what the term "rule of thumb" originates from. Later, they run afoul of the Russian mob when they're in their favorite pub, and soon enough those mob guys end up dead. For a while anyway, their thread of the story is pretty good. It's with the introduction of Willem DaFoe as an FBI agent that this movie makes its first big misstep. We first meet him at what appears to be a murder scene, asserting his authority as top dog. He gets a "Mr. Cool Intro" - introduced in slow-motion with a rock-guitar struttin' song for the score. The only reason I gave it a name is because it happens so goddamned often. He humiliates a hapless local cop again and again and again in almost every scene the poor bastard gets. He does weird shit like listen to chamber music, "air-conducting" it, while stomping all over the scene, I guess to help him concentrate or something. We later see him reclining on a leather couch at a massacre scene - I think I've seen enough episodes of Law & Order to know you don't do that (well, maybe on Law & Order: Criminal Intent). He's also gay, and treats other gays like shit for laughs. Is being mean to gays funnier if it's a gay guy doing it? This movie seems to think so. The brothers turn themselves in, and after describing their frightening ordeal (with a bit of truth-bending regarding the fates of some guns and money), no charges are pressed and the media hails them as heroes, even saints. That's when they seem to decide to become a vigilante tag team, using the money to buy an arsenal, and staging massacres and executions of underworld scum who deserve it (it doesn't occur to them that the guy who sold them the guns is probably no less deserving). These are shown with a couple of somewhat fun but more than a little silly action sequences, like when their bickering in a ventilation shaft escalates into a very close-quarters fistfight, and finally into them falling out and hanging by a huge tangle of rope, suspended above the ground in the room they then proceed to mow down like a spinning, bullet-spitting chandelier. After killing their victims, they always say a prayer and put pennies on their eyes, so we know they're not JUST doing this for kicks. But kicks seem to be a motivation too - "coming down" after a battle, they discuss how much fun it was. The brothers are joined by their bumbling, panicky friend (David Della Rocco) who knows a lot more about the mob than they do, and knows where to find everyone worth finding in the vigilante business. He accidentally shoots his girlfriend's cat, which might've been a good sign to the brothers to not let him use a gun, but they do. Starting to get spooked, one of the mafia dons implores one of the men upstairs for help. Suddenly they're at war, and they're losing, and only one thing can save them: Il Duce, a stone-cold killer in a faroff prison. He gets a long, scary intro, until he's revealed to be played by Billy Connolly, and he doesn't seem so scary anymore. His first meeting with the brothers demonstrates little more than that he's a very fast - and very inaccurate - shooter, making him less intimidating still. His thread of the plot just goes downhill from here. I liked the idea of these otherwise normal joes who get themselves in too deep in this vigilante business, playing at being action movie heroes and then have to deal with the meanest, coldest killer alive - a device, after, all, from action movies. I did NOT like how it panned out. The aftermath of this scene is an investigation by DaFoe and the cops; while slightly funny for the FBI guy starting to screw up, writer/director Troy Duffy takes what starts as an okay idea (showing the scene alternately as it really happened, and how DaFoe thinks it happened, while DaFoe walks among the players as if he was actually there while it happened) and takes it so far it stops being a neat idea and starts looking, uh...it doesn't look so neat anymore (during the shootout, DaFoe gets on his knees, makes little guns out of his fingers and goes kapow, kapow). The Boondock Saints doesn't shed much light on either side of the vigilantism debate; vigilantism is so idealized here it becomes fantasy. As an action movie, few scenes have an element of danger that gives them a real thrill, like the early scene were one of the brothers is handcuffed to a toilet and the other is taken out for execution (though wouldn't it have been more prudent to execute him inside, with fewer probably witnesses?). Most are just silly, starting with the ending of that scene, because the brothers seem undefeatable. Where the movie does work is in the really small details, like Rocco's performance, how DaFoe treats last night's conquest the next morning (up until he calls him a fag, anyway), or attaching a specific year to the "rule of thumb" (I knew this, didn't know the year). I guess I've given away about three quarters of the movie at this point, which leaves the REALLY outrageous stuff needing to be left unsaid lest I blow the whole thing. But I don't think it's unfair to point out that throughout its length, The Boondock Saints paints a really rosy picture of vigilantism, with its downside given only the briefest screen time (that cat). Everybody is won over to the boys' cause, except of course the mob and maybe a few women who are scared shitless during the massacres and executions; a TV news reporter points out the conspicuous absence of a public outcry to have the vigilantes stopped. The otherwise well-placed subtext about Genovese seems to fall apart if we try to compare what happened with her to several well-armed and skilled killers pointing their guns at witnesses. The Boondock Saints ends with a montage of what might or might not be real people asked on the street what they think of vigilantism - most of them are all for it, but none of them on either side say anything about it you haven't heard before. This movie is executed (bad pun) on a sort of trashy fantasy level, not nearly as bad as Death Wish 3, but in much the same spirit. Personally, I would've had an easier time cheering for the boys if there was more of a personal stake in their activities than just having their friend tell them these guys are in the mob, they deserve to die, let's kill them. Duffy includes barely enough contrast on the ethical status of vigilantism to make me wonder why he didn't either go farther or just leave it out altogether; this movie brings up one or too many ethical questions to be a superior Death Wish sequel, but isn't thoughtful enough about addressing them to be anything more. BACK TO THE B's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE