Boondock Saints

This was one of my favorite films while in college. I hadn’t seen it for a few years, and while I don’t believe it holds up as well as I expected it would, I still enjoy the film quite a lot. Then again, I think this may be one of those films that is required viewing and required to be liked while in college. It’s some unwritten rule.

The film, a financial disaster, became a huge hit when it hit shelves on DVD.

The premise of the movie is that two Irish Catholic brothers in South Boston (Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus), in lack of a better way to put it, are sent on a mission from God to punish the "unjust." Much debate has been raised as to whether or not this is actually so, or if they’ve just decided to take matters entirely into their own hands and enact their own brand of "justice" on those who they deem fit for punishment.

Willem Dafoe plays a brilliant FBI agent who is sent in to investigate a string of slayings that are occurring in the Russian mafia. As the bodies pile up, the FBI moves closer and closer in on the brothers, but one thing is certain, the people who are turning up dead – deserve it, and they know it.

David Della Rocco, Billy Connolly, Carlo Rota, and Ron Jeremy also star.

The film is full of stereotypes and clichés. Yes. But for my enjoyment, I don’t think that any of that is a detriment to the film – it gives the movie some character. The story is relatively bare-bones, quirky, and violent.

*** out of *****