The SmarK DVD Rant for The Boondock Saints (1999)
“Maybe it was one guy with six guns.”
– Sticking on the more eclectic, off-the-beaten-path DVD review route, this was a movie that I first noticed when it was released in a crappy Canada-only DVD version for under $10 with no special features. It looked like another in the endless run of Pulp Fiction wannabes judging by the back of the box, and I didn’t give it a second thought until I began hearing from friends — quite a lot of them in fact — that I HAD to check out this movie called “Boondock Saints”, because it was a lot like “Snatch” and “Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels” and was cool and stuff.
Well, with recommendations like that, I decided to check out the prices on it, and lo and behold Fox had picked up the distribution rights in the meantime and issued it as a special edition of sorts, and it was still dirt cheap. With both attributes speaking to my heart, I picked it up on Amazon for $12 and away we go
The Film:
Part action movie, part parable, part self-aware spoof of B-level action movies, Boondock Saints is at heart a moral question wrapped in lots of gunplay and one-liners: Is it right to slaughter lowlifes and drug dealers if God says it is? Well, fraternal twins Connor & Murphy McManus think so, and after killing a pair of Russian mob goons in the name of self-defense (after a brisk bar-fight that ends in one of the Russians getting his ass literally set on fire!), they have a vision from the Almighty, which tells them to go forth and shoot the shit out of the bad people in the world. They recruit Mafia “delivery boy” Rocco (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Chris Kanyon, both in looks and portrayed intelligence) and before you can say “Cliched shots of hitmen walking in slow motion”, they’re tearing up and down the mob’s top-10 list in the name of God. And that’s pretty much it. Oh, there’s Billy Connelly in a hilarious take on Hannibal Lecter (although played dead serious), which in turn produces the quote from above, but for the most part plot is not the most important element in the movie by any means.
While this could be a recipe for disaster in a movie playing it straight, Boondock Saints operates under no such presumptions. From the first scene with Detective Greenly, where he gives a long (and hilarious) soliloquy about his theory on how the Russians died (involving kitchen appliances and one REALLY fat guy hanging out in a back alley), you can tell this a movie with tongue planted firmly in cheek. The real star of the show is Willem Dafoe playing a swaggering (and gay) FBI agent who is desperate to get into the heads of the world’s newest serial killers. But once he’s there is unsure of what side he wants to be on. Dafoe chews the scenery with gusto, especially when playing off the moronic Greenly (at one point, he’s so happy that the Boston cops have actually pieced together a clue that he does a Riverdance to celebrate in the middle of the crime scene). Dafoe’s character actually gets so frazzled by the unpredictable brothers that by the end of the movie, Greenly is making better leaps of logic than he is. It’s a neat character and one that’s written well and played better.
The structure of the movie itself is also quite cool, somewhat out-of-sequence without being gratuitously so. The gangland murders are set up, and then we see the police mopping up the crime scene afterwards, and then we see the actual violence and find out if the police theories matched up with the actual crime that occurred. It’s a welcome diversion from the usual action-movie directing style, and it’s not used so often that it wears out its welcome.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the movie itself. By 90 minutes, it becomes fairly clear that there’s no big payoff and the last 10 minutes is just going be the story limping along lamely towards an indecisive conclusion. The courtroom speech and man-on-the-street interviews at the end both feel tacked on, although I will say that I’m glad this movie didn’t ape Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid by stealing THAT ending, too. Don’t watch the movie waiting for it to take some sort of moral stand, because it never does. You’re better off just enjoying it for what it is: Pulp Fiction, with Oasis playing the hitmen.
The Video:
Whereas Fox is distributing the movie, you can tell that they didn’t really do much to clean up the transfer. It looks good, but any hint of black produces very noticeable and ugly compression artifacts, and it gets a bit distracting after a while. Edge enhancement is also really bad, and although I don’t usually pay attention to that sort of thing, when two guys are standing in front of a white wall and you can see the outline around them, that’s a problem. Other than that, colors are good and the transfer is clean.
The Audio:
You get Dolby Digital 5.1 or good old Dolby Surround. The 5.1 mix feels just right for the movie — quiet for the dialogue, and BLASTING the subwoofer during tense moments and shootouts. Not much in the way of surround effects, however, but this was a fairly low budget endeavor anyway. It sounds good enough for an action movie, and that’s all I ask.
The Extras:
Not bad for a cheapie disc
– Director commentary with writer/director Troy Duffy.
– 7 deleted/extended scenes, which are almost raw camera feeds in terms of quality but offer some funny stuff (such as the punchline to the boys’ conversation with their mother).
– A couple of minutes of outtakes, worth a chuckle.
– Theatrical trailer, and the usual cast/crew biographies.
Pretty much all you can ask for the price.
Ratings:
The Film: ****1/2
The Video: ***
The Audio: ****
The Extras: **
