Opens at Pacific Place, Fri., Nov. 13. Rated R. 117 minutes.
Filmmaker Troy Duffy certainly makes an easy target—at least his former friends thought so when they made the 2003 doc Overnight, a rise-fall-and-turnaround portrait of Duffy's hubris and recklessness during the making of The Boondock Saints. To his credit, not only did Duffy get his 1999 crime thriller made for less than half of the Weinsteins' promised budget, but its crippled release still found an excitable cult following from VHS to Blu-Ray. Here, then, is the inevitable sequel, and if you don't already know about the devout Irish Catholic McManus twins (Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flanery) who deliver vigilante justice to Boston's underworld with the help of a rogue FBI Special Agent, don't sweat it: That's also the plot of BS2's childish daydream. Willem Dafoe's gay fed is out, replaced by his sexed-up protégée Julie Benz, and the Saints are joined by Clifton Collins Jr. as a goofy but loyal Latino brawler who helps them find a mysterious priest killer and tries to look badass while walking in slow motion. John Woo outgrew stylizing movies like this in the '90s, but Duffy is still chasing his perfect slide-and-shoot, except now with more self-satisfied posturing, awkward pop-culture referencing, casual homophobia and racism, and the most vulgar co-opting of religious iconography this side of Dan Brown.
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Joshua 11/11/2009 12:13:18 PM
In the first film, the turning point (as they're chilling in the prison skills) is the recitation from Genesis 9: if any man shed a man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God he was created. They didn't make up scripture like some lame-ass Tarantino movie. Paul says the purpose of the state is to reward those who do good and strike fear in the hearts of those who do evil (that's why soldiers have swords). If the state is failing in this respect, or the verse from Genesis is being ignored, should Christians take that mandate into their own hands? The answer is, "of course not" because Paul's call for us to obey the state isn't contingent on the behavior of the state. Nevertheless, the film delves deeply into the question of Justice, what is Justice, and how should crime be dealt with? Is there a turning point after which the only solution for egregious immorality is death? In other words, I would in no way fault them for co-opting Christian themes, for they are also co-opting Christian memes. Dan Brown shows only contempt for his straw-man version of Christian memes and bigotry regarding how the faith has been and is practiced.