The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day: Shoot, Kill, Pray

Sony/Apparition

The tools of Duffy's revenge fantasies.

Details

Opens at Pacific Place, Fri., Nov. 13. Rated R. 117 minutes.

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More About

• Troy Duffy
• Boondock Saints
• Willem Dafoe
• Sean Patrick Flanery
• Norman Reedus

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.