Well, that was one way to completely destroy one of the most beloved cult movies of all time. Let's kick this off with a quick review of the original cult phenomenon. First-time writer and director, Troy Duffy, somehow convinced someone to make his movie. It made like $10,000 dollars in the theaters and every critic hated it like it was the spawn of Hitler, Mussolini and Spiderman 3. The movie picked up an incredible cult following when it was released on DVD and is now a personal favorite in my collection. Brilliant, funny writing, an overused plot that was still original, good acting by little known actors (aside from Willem Dafoe and Billy Connolly) and intense slow-motion action sequences. You should all see it right now.
Since "The Boondock Saints" made like 27 million off of DVD sales, and has a humongous following, everyone kind of expected Troy Duffy to come back with a second one. It took ten years, but he did it. "All Saints Day" has raped one of my favorite movies almost as hard as Indiana Jones was raped by George Lucas. It is absolutely ridiculous. I sat in the theater trying, TRYING very hard to find some redeeming qualities in this movie - anything that was reminiscent of its predecessor. Nothing. Could not find a thing.
The plot makes about as much sense as letting a pet rattlesnake free in your house because you think it needs more "together" time. If anyone saw the first movie you know that the movie ended after the brothers and their dad effectively destroyed the Yakkavetti (spelling?) crime family in Boston - vigilante justice at its finest. For some reason, and contrary to everything in the first film, they just quit. The feds were helping them kill bad guys, and they just quit and moved to Ireland. 10 years later someone murders a priest in Boston and makes it look like the MacManus brothers did it. They get all pissy and ship back to Boston to kill everyone responsible. Along the way they adopt the most stereotypical Mexican in existence and try to rely on him for comic relief (spoiler alert: it doesn't work). He's not even their friend, they just find him on the ship and he wants to tag along. Then the director went, "Yes! Character development sucks! Go guns!"
For some reason Troy felt it necessary to replace Rocco (The brothers' friend, who gets killed in the first movie) and replace Willem Dafoe. This is the part that made me so mad I swore in the theater about how stupid it was. Dafoe was replaced by a female protegee of his...and she has a southern drawl. I don't know about you, but if anyone has a southern drawwwwwwwllllllll in a film, they better be on a porch, 80 years old, and holding a shotgun. This woman pissed me off. She pretended she knew everything and because someone thought she was pretty, the director had a lot of scenes of her looking at the camera, smiling like an idiot.
Troy Duffy must have watched "Wanted," "Punisher 2," and every Nicholas Cage action movie, before writing "All Saints Day." The plot makes no sense, and a ridiculous backstory just convolutes everything just that much more. I'm not sure where the dialogue went, but just to note, because you use the word "gratuitous" in front of the word "violence" does not make you Shakespeare. Every memorable scene in the first movie, and almost every dialogue (good and bad) is repeated to a mind-numbing effect. There is almost no way this movie could have been worse. (trust me, the ghost of Rocco shows up, it's god-awful).
Grade: half a star out of 4, and that's only because I like watching people shoot other people in slow-motion with silenced pistols.
-Christ0pher O'Connell
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