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More Ammunition For The Critics | Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flanery break out their guns one more time in The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day.

THE BOONDOCK SAINTS II: ALL SAINTS DAY
Directed by Troy Duffy. Starring Sean Patrick Flanery, Norman Reedus, Billy Connolly, Julie Benz. Now playing.
*

About 10 years ago, a budding filmmaker named Troy Duffy got a lucky break from Miramax kingpin Harvey Weinstein, who bought his feature-length script about avenging twin Irish brothers who wreak havoc on the Boston underworld. After a couple years of production hell and a documentary called Overnight exposing Duffy’s raging egomania, The Boondock Saints seemed destined for obscurity — but instead it became an inexplicably huge cult hit on DVD. So here we are, a decade later, with an unnecessary sequel that is only a shadow of the first film.

I wasn’t a fan of the original, but at least it was entertaining and featured a quirky performance from Willem Dafoe. Here he’s limited to a cameo, with Julie Benz stepping into his shoes as the FBI agent who helps the Saints behind the scenes. After a Boston priest is murdered, the gun-toting MacManus brothers (Sean Patrick Flanery, Norman Reedus), who have been living quietly in Ireland, come out of retirement to get vengeance once more — cue a montage of them showering in a barn, cutting their rugged hair, and digging up their buried guns. I’m not kidding. That’s what happens.

They return to the streets of Boston with a new Mexican sidekick named Romeo, who becomes the butt of several good-natured racial slurs (oh, Mexicans!) as they search for the mastermind who lured them out of hiding. The crew of cops who aided the boys last time return, but Duffy gives them little to do except some Three Stooges shtick and plenty of adolescent dialogue as they ogle Agent Blume floating around the crime scenes. The gimmick of stylized recreations of the gunfights, a highlight in the first film, is revisited here, only more cartoonishly, with Benz stepping sensually through the carnage like a Maxim cover model.

Of course, Boondock Saints II was never meant to be taken seriously. But did the action, which should be the film’s centerpiece, have to be so watered-down, with the Saints walking into a roomful of mobsters and slaughtering them without the slightest sense of peril? This is videogame violence at its worse, without even the tension of the “amateur hitmen” concept from the first film. The sole bright spots are Billy Connolly, back again as the father of the boys and bringing a bit of believability to this ridiculous world; and Peter Fonda, who turns up as his rival. It’s a shame these actors are left lost in this uninspired, immature, homophobic mess. Pray that there isn’t a third.