The Boondock Saints

June 26, 2006

Rated: NR Runtime: 108 min Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Two Irish brothers from south Boston, Connor (Flannery) and Murphy (Reedus) MacManus accidentally get caught up in the middle of a turf war with the Russian mob, when they come to the rescue of a local pub owner that the Russkies are attempting to extort protection money from. The MacManus brothers beat the holy hell out of these guys and even set one of there asses on fire (that hadda hurt), so of course the Russians come looking for payback. The mobsters track the boys to their rundown apartment, handcuff Connor to the toilet and drag Murphy down into the alley where they plan to execute him… This does not go the way the Russians plan it and through a very bizarre course of events the brothers escape and the would-be hitmen wind up being the ones stinking up the alley instead. I won’t explain how because that would spoil the fun.

The Boondock Saints The movie has a very interesting way of telling the story whenever violence occurs; the scene starts but just before the bullets start to fly it cuts to the aftermath. This is the point when we meet Special Agent Paul Smecker (Dafoe), the FBI agent in charge of organized crime assigned to the dead mobsters’ case. There are many theories on what actually happened in that alley, including one about a big fat guy that crushes people, but Smecker sees things differently. During a briefing with the local police precinct on the case, the 2 brothers stumble in beaten and battered to turn themselves in, and since the evil doers were killed in self defense the brothers are set free.

The city makes them heroes and this is when the real movie begins. The brothers decide to deal out their own brand of justice to anyone that does harm to others; Pimps, perverts, murderers, mobsters, etc, etc, and even though they have never done anything like this before, they are really good at it and manage to ring up quite a body count all over the city. There a few mishaps along the way but overall the job always gets done. With the help of their friend a low level mob errand boy named Rocco (Rocco), they get all the info they need to punish the wicked. Agent Smecker is assigned to all of their cases, which makes sense because they only kill mobsters and lowlifes, and that falls in his ballpark. Smecker has a pretty good idea who is doing it (SYMBOLISM folks… it’ll get ya caught everytime) but he understands more than anyone how these types manage to escape ‘legal’ justice, and this may be exactly what they deserve, so he has an attack of conscience and can’t decide if he wants to catch them or if he wants to help them. Anywhoo, after losing man after man to the new brothers grimm, the mob brings in the best hitman alive, Il Duce (Connolly) to stop them. Bullets and bodies everywhere, a really cool twist and an awesome ending.

Boondock Saints is one of those movies that most people have never seen or heard of because it made almst nothing when it was released in theatres but it has found a home on DVD. When it comes to revenge movies this is one of the best ones out there and if you have even a fraction of Irish blood you have to see it. The prayer they ‘all’ say before passing sentence alone is worth the price of this excellent film. Buy it, because if this is your flavor, watching this one once just won’t do.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Posted by J.C. Edwards | Filed Under 5 Stars, Action, Billy Connolly, DVD, David Della Rocco, NR, Norman Reedus, Sean Patrick Flannery, Willem Dafoe