So tonight I sat down and rewatched Boondock Saints for the first time in about 15 years. I saw it when I was a kid and absolutely loved it. Thought the action was great, the characters were interesting, and the premise was cool in that it took the whole gory vigilante crime drama angle and approached it in this goofy, over the top fashion.
Rewatching it as an adult, however, I don't know what I was thinking; as the more I watched, the more everything I remembered loving about it just seemed to fall apart... and yet I still really, really enjoyed it for whatever reason.
The Macmanus brothers are probably the most boring, cardboard-cutout characters I've ever seen in a movie. Yet the supporting cast more than makes up for this. Willem Defoe's character is fantastic, and the shenanigans going on within the police force are great throughout the movie. Billy Connolly, for as little as he's in it, is just perfect as this untouchable, enigmatic badass. And, for as much as I didn't like Rocco, his presence in the story is exactly what's needed to keep things from getting too grim in a few key scenes.
The action, while still interesting in places, is just plain dumb in a lot of scenes (like someone trying and failing to recreate a shootout from a Tarantino movie). In particular, I keep thinking back to the scene where Billy Connolly has his big shootout with the brothers. Everything about that scene goes from appearing to be super exciting, to being insanely dumb when you realize all four characters present are shooting at each other from across a lawn, practically standing still, and, with the exception of Connolly (who's supposed to be trying to kill them and ultimately only superficially wounds each of them), are missing just about every single shot.
The writing is awful throughout, with some exceptions here and there. The scene in the confessional feels like the most hamfisted dialogue they could have possibly fit in there. But then you also get these great lines here and there from Defoe or one of the side characters that make it apparent that someone behind the scenes knew how to write genuinely good dialogue between characters.
Even the way the movie is cut feels amateurish and poorly thought out; with scenes just fading to black and fading back in somewhere and sometime else. It's just a bad way to make a movie and it left it constantly feeling like something was cut or missing... and yet, even that managed to start growing on me by the time the movie was almost over.
So I don't know how to feel. It's one of the few movies out there that I could pick apart for hours and write a thesis on all the things wrong with it; but then still come out saying that I absolutely loved it. Anyone else run into these sort of feelings about a piece of media? Because I genuinely can't think of too many others I feel this way about...
(Also if a mod could take the "s" off Boondock in the title, I'd appreciate it. Autocorrect didn't seem to like it any time I typed it out...)
Rewatching it as an adult, however, I don't know what I was thinking; as the more I watched, the more everything I remembered loving about it just seemed to fall apart... and yet I still really, really enjoyed it for whatever reason.
The Macmanus brothers are probably the most boring, cardboard-cutout characters I've ever seen in a movie. Yet the supporting cast more than makes up for this. Willem Defoe's character is fantastic, and the shenanigans going on within the police force are great throughout the movie. Billy Connolly, for as little as he's in it, is just perfect as this untouchable, enigmatic badass. And, for as much as I didn't like Rocco, his presence in the story is exactly what's needed to keep things from getting too grim in a few key scenes.
The action, while still interesting in places, is just plain dumb in a lot of scenes (like someone trying and failing to recreate a shootout from a Tarantino movie). In particular, I keep thinking back to the scene where Billy Connolly has his big shootout with the brothers. Everything about that scene goes from appearing to be super exciting, to being insanely dumb when you realize all four characters present are shooting at each other from across a lawn, practically standing still, and, with the exception of Connolly (who's supposed to be trying to kill them and ultimately only superficially wounds each of them), are missing just about every single shot.
The writing is awful throughout, with some exceptions here and there. The scene in the confessional feels like the most hamfisted dialogue they could have possibly fit in there. But then you also get these great lines here and there from Defoe or one of the side characters that make it apparent that someone behind the scenes knew how to write genuinely good dialogue between characters.
Even the way the movie is cut feels amateurish and poorly thought out; with scenes just fading to black and fading back in somewhere and sometime else. It's just a bad way to make a movie and it left it constantly feeling like something was cut or missing... and yet, even that managed to start growing on me by the time the movie was almost over.
So I don't know how to feel. It's one of the few movies out there that I could pick apart for hours and write a thesis on all the things wrong with it; but then still come out saying that I absolutely loved it. Anyone else run into these sort of feelings about a piece of media? Because I genuinely can't think of too many others I feel this way about...
(Also if a mod could take the "s" off Boondock in the title, I'd appreciate it. Autocorrect didn't seem to like it any time I typed it out...)
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