Boondock Saints

THE BOONDOCK SAINTS is a film that goes nowhere. Telling of a couple of Irish, inexplicably skilled crooks, the film employs a myriad of showy scenes, but the style behind those scenes only comes out of the same wantonness that created the plot of overly-religious, crazily skilled Irish vigilantes. Sprinkled with scenes of Willem Dafoe operatically overacting to the crime scenes the Boondock Saints leave behind, each of these scenes, which consist of the shoot-up by the Saints upon some obligatory bad guy, and then Dafoe's crazed re-staging of the crime. What the film lacks though is any intent. The Saints are doing what they're doing because it makes for some cool (but repetitive) scenes, but those scenes aren't centered around anything tangible. It's like a continual, vicious cycle of intent. The shoot-up scenes exist because the Dafoe scenes need to, which exist because the filmmakers have to have showy scenes, which exist because the Saints are vigilantes, which exist because there needs to be shoot-up scenes. Beyond that, the film is weak, for its shoot-up scenes aren't good enough to stop the film from being pretty boring and predictable, devolving into a formula, and eventually, a transparent attempt at copying other, better films with off-key characters. The thing is though, you actually have to be skilled in order to create a convincing loon. These characters all look too dumb to exist.
Boondock Saints: ★1/2