Troy Duffy’s back…but is it a good thing?
Image Courtesy of IMPawards.com
Director: Troy Duffy
Notable Cast: Julie Benz, Norman Reedus, Sean Patrick Flanery, Clifton Collins Jr, Peter Fonda, David Della Rocco, Judd Nelson, Billy Connolly
Ten years ago, Troy Duffy spectacularly rose and fell in Hollywood based on a script he wrote that fell into the hands of Harvey Weinstein. With no screenwriting experience prior to this, Duffy landed a dream deal that wound up turning into a nightmare. Duffy’s spectacular flameout wound up the stuff of legends via the immortal documentary Overnight, which may have set a record for being seen more on big screens then the film he made (The Boondock Saints) did. But The Boondock Saints would wind up catching fire on DVD and, 10 years later, Duffy’s overcame his lack of prior positive interpersonal connections in Hollywood to secure funding for a sequel. But after viewing The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, maybe he should’ve left good enough alone.
When we last saw the McManus brothers (Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flanery), they had just executed a Mafia higher up with their father (Billy Connolly) in their divine-inspired mission of justice against the criminal underworld. Boondock II finds them in Ireland, working as shepherds, when Concezio Yakavetta (Judd Nelson) brings them out of hiding. The son of the Mafia don the boys executed in the first film, Yakavetta has a priest executed from their old neighborhood to bring them out in plain sight. When word reaches the boys, they return to Boston to restart their stylized war on crime. With a new FBI Agent on their case (Julie Benz), the two have a new sidekick (Clifton Collins Jr) and some new scores to settle. But the problem is that Boondock II is nothing more then a retread of the original with nothing new to say.
That’s not say Duffy hasn’t made a visually interesting film. There’s always some camera or screenwriting trick to be found, as Duffy pulls out nearly the same exact formula as he did with the original. While his actors have aged a bit since the last outing, and Benz makes for an interesting replacement for the first film’s secondary antagonist (Willem Dafoe), Duffy if anything has crafted a film that never stops being interesting to look at. It’s a film that oozes style and has an inherent sense of “cool” that can’t be faked. If anything Duffy has crafted his own visual style and sensibilities that if one hadn’t seen a significant amount of films.
That’s the problem, as Duffy is a homeless man’s Quentin Tarantino in that sense.
Duffy’s story-telling style and plot development is still stuck in the post-Tarantino era from which he came. He seems to be a one-trick pony with his sequel, which has all of the style but none of the interesting parts the first one did. The first had the interesting subtext of divine inspiration and vigilante justice. The second is missing those parts, giving us a standard issue action flick from the wave of films that Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs that came and went with little fanfare.
There’s nothing new to say in the film’s story, either, as this film rides the good will of the first film and nothing more. There’s a larger story to be told about the nature of killing in the name of God and the nature of vengeance, et al, which Duffy tapped into 10 years ago so successfully. This is just another standard issue action sequel, the small independent version of Die Hard 2 without that film’s heart or quality.
While there is no doubt that Duffy has crafted a film that looks pretty, it took him 10 years to make a sequel that in the end didn’t need to be made. If Duffy has a future as a film-maker, hopefully he’ll tap into the creative spirit that inspired his first film as opposed to merely taking the parts that merely looked the coolest.
FINAL RATING (ON A SCALE OF 1-5 BUCKETS):
