It was 10 years ago that Troy Duffy got his break when Miramax bankrolled his little Boston-set gangster movie. Then a documentary called “Overnight” revealed Duffy to be an abusive on-set monster. Then Miramax dumped him. Then he regrouped and made the movie on half the original budget.
The twist? “The Boondock Saints” turned out to be unwatchable. The twist on the twist? It found a raging cult audience anyway.
That’s all the back story you need for “The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day,” a sequel you didn’t ask for. And the surprise is that Duffy apparently spent the last decade learning about filmmaking — little things like where to put the camera and how to structure a scene for baseline coherence.
The result isn’t art but it is an improvement: a lowdown, sub-Tarantino action comedy that, unlike the original, doesn’t make you want to claw your eyes out. How’s that for praise?
A recap: In the first “Boondock Saints,” moronic but civic-minded Irish American twin brothers Connor (Sean Patrick Flanery) and Murphy (Norman Reedus) MacManus waged holy war on Boston’s Italian gangsters with the undercover help of a gay FBI agent (Willem Dafoe) and a hitman who turned out to be the twins’ long-lost father (Billy Connolly). Were the MacManuses saints or sinners? The people of Boston couldn’t make up their minds and neither could the movie.
Dafoe is out of the picture in “All Saints Day,” but Connolly is still around, his gray locks flowing like Jehovah’s. He and the boys are living in placid Irish exile when a priest turns up dead in Boston, murdered in the brothers’ signature style. Someone wants them back and back they come.
For most of its running time, “All Saints Day” plays like a boozy, amiably foulmouthed remedial school reunion: Here are the three stoogelike Boston detectives (Bob Marley, Brian Mahoney and David Ferry) who aid the brothers; here’s the ghost of Rocco (David Della Rocco), the first movie’s third wheel; here’s doddery old Gerard Parkes reprising his bit as a bartender with Tourette syndrome.
“All Saints Day” still feels like it was edited with a hacksaw, and the crude comic dialogue still scrapes along the barroom floor, but the general vibe is one of relaxed, murderous high spirits, and the movie’s hardly ever smug.
Why should it be? Troy Duffy proved long ago that you can make an absolutely terrible film and still find an audience.
“The Boondock Saints II” is a reward for the faithful and no one else.
“THE BOONDOCK SAINTS 2: ALL SAINTS DAY.”
R for bloody violence, language and some nudity. 1 hour, 27 minutes. Written and directed by Troy Duffy; starring Norman Reedus, Sean Patrick Flanery, Clifton Collins, Julie Benz, Judd Nelson, Robert Cochrane Marley Jr., Peter Fonda, and Billy Connolly. Opens today at area theaters.
