The Best in Cult: BOONDOCK SAINTS

And shepherds we shall be, for Thee, my Lord, for Thee. Power hath descended forth from Thy hand, that our feet may swiftly carry out Thy command. So we shall flow a river forth to Thee and teeming with souls shall it ever be. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. - The Boondock Saints' Prayer

The most romantic of film success stories, especially those called cult, always start with poor initial critical reception. 'The Boondock Saints', arguably the greatest of all cult success stories, and the epitome of the slow-burner, certainly followed the trend: the film has enjoyed some colourful criticism since its original limited release in 1999 including being called

"a series of gratuitously violent setpieces strung together with only the sketchiest semblance of a plot" and all style and no substance, a film so gleeful in its endorsement of vigilante justice that it almost veers (or ascends) into self-parody"

by Nathan Rabin of The AV Club.

The most compelling aspect of the 'The Boondock Saints' story is the self-composed tragedy that has been creator Troy Duffy's career. Originally moving to Hollywood to pursue every wasters dream- his own take on it was his band, The Brood- Duffy's moment of inspiration, and his ticket to infamy, came in the unlikely shape of a light-fingered dealer taking money from the corpse of an unlucky woman in the apartment across the hall from his own home.

I decided right there that out of sheer frustration and not being able to afford a psychologist, I was going to write this, think about it. People watching the news sometimes get so disgusted by what they see. Susan Smith drowning her kids... guys going into McDonald's, lighting up the whole place. You hear things that disgust you so much that even if you're Mother Teresa, there comes a breaking point. One day you're gonna watch the news and you're gonna say, 'Whoever did that despicable thing should pay with their life. You think €” for maybe just a minute €” that whoever did that should die, without any fuckin' jury. I was going to give everybody that sick fantasy. And tell it as truthfully as I could.

Filled with the kind of politicised rage that often evades the biggest directors when they come to make socially motivated films, Duffy knocked out the script for 'The Boondock Saints' on a rented computer between shifts as a bartender and bouncer. Quite amazingly, 'Saints' was picked up barely months after he completed it in 1996 after Duffy successfully marketed it to the Weinsteins at Miramax, securing a $300,000 deal with a $15m budget. So far so good for the immaculate rags to riches story.

But then, Duffy made his first mistake, apparently by just being himself. The excellent documentary 'Overnight' directed by Mark Brian Smith and Tony Montana (not that one), tells the story of Duffy' rise and fall and shows him to be a monstrous man, and a royal pain in the arse for everyone who encounters him. The documentary starts as Duffy's rise began in earnest, riding on the crest of the Weinstein's involvement in his rookie project and buoyed further by their promise to buy the bar he worked in and hire him to run it, but it soon becomes clear that Duffy is crass and arrogant, which ultimately costs him the Miramax deal, and leads to the film being made on a budget less than half the size of the Weinstein's offer. Not only that, the Cannes trip booked to find a distributor ends up being a waste of time, as every single major American distributor passes on the project and the only bone they are thrown ends up being a measly 5 cinema deal for a run of 7 days. Little wonder then that the total revenue for the first cinematic release of 'The Boondock Saints' stands at an incredibly small $30k.

But then something wonderful happened- following the film's DVD release (and subsequent special editions), it gathered a huge fan following, making $50m and counting off the shelves. Rather fittingly - though tragically also - Duffy has seen nothing of that revenue; his deal with the distributors stipulating as much.

At the end of the day, according to 'Overnight' at least, Duffy was a victim of his own ego: throughout the doc he is abusive to pretty much everyone who comes close to him. According to co-director Montana,

"Troy seemed to revel in the attention of Hollywood's lights and our cameras. Only three times during the production did he ask not to be filmed. It was on those occasions that he threatened us."

Allegedly, Duffy also made several racial, sexist, and homophobic comments that did not make their way into the documentary, hardly endearing himself to anyone in a period in which he should have been attempting to ingratiate himself within the wider Hollywood community, to make sure he wasn't just a flash in the pan one-hit wonder. Evidently, there was no attempt, and Troy Duffy has gone down in history as one of the most notable implosion cases in cinematic history: he could have been Matt Damon or Ben Affleck (in terms of film-making at least), instead he was a car-wreck of his own making, and his attitude ended up costing him the greatest deal he could ever have hoped for. The Weinsteins would have made Duffy a big deal, that much is certain, the critics may have been more forgiving of the $15m budgetted version, and we may not have had to wait eleven years for a sequel that fan power should have got made eight years ago at the least.

The film itself is a triumph, in my opinion. Despite the relatively small-time casting- leads Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus were best known for 'The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones' and 'Mimic' respectively- the acting on show is pretty damn good: Willem Dafoe is as weird and cool as ever (and overdoes it wonderfully and for once welcomely), and Billy Connolly proves why he was chosen twice in 1999 to play hitmen (the other was 'The Debt Collector' if you wondered).

The film has been accused of being a brainless Tarantino clone, all bullshit machoism and needless pornographied violence- but it works on a base level that we all wish we could channel the inner vigilante and right the wrongs we see every day. And it is a brilliant testosterone ride that dumps you back down after 100 or so minutes and hasnt taken a single thing from you in return.

A great deal of criticism has focused on the fact that the film is cliche heavy, and offers nothing new (hence the clone accusations) to a genre already bloated by too many copy-cats, and effectively references other films quite blatantly in all of its better scenes to the point of parody, but I disagree that this is necessarily a bad thing. I also totally believe the sentiment that 'The Boondock Saints' merely arrived late at the party: the sub-genre of ultra-violent gritty flicks full of stylization and confusing moral classifications had blossomed throughout the 90s, and were it not for the presence of so many, Saints could well have been heralded as a great entrant into that canon. Where some say the film is derivative, I see it as merely unoriginal: so what if we have seen the ideas before?! If that were a stumbling block, most modern films wouldnt be made.

The Screen Rant review goes on to offer a list of the cliches that 'The Boondock Saints' is guilty of furthering:

€FBI agents are 100 times smarter than the bumbling local cops, figure out everything (even with little or no evidence) by getting inside the killer€™s head and treat everyone like crap €After a massive shootout with hundreds of bullets fired, there are no deaths and only a few minor wounds €People shot from 10 yards away die instantly, but a guy who is shot at point blank range keeps fighting €A murder investigation leads police to a strip club €Someone crawls through the building€™s air ducts and falls through the ceiling into the right room €A dangerous assassin is paroled(!) just in time to do an important hit for a crime boss.

But is the fact that a film is so closely on-genre that it appears to deal solely in cliches reason enough to lambast it? I would argue that every genre movie ever made could be accused of that 'crime', and the majority of them dont bother to even try to look good. Because, for a budget of $7m, Saints really does look great. Just ask those fans.

The long and short of it is that there were bound to be mixed opinions about this week's DVD released sequel, imaginatively called 'The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day'.

The rabid fans, myself included, have waited eleven years for the faintest hint that Troy Duffy would somehow be able to get it together and make a follow-up, and will buy the DVD no matter what the critics say: the critics on the other hand will hate it, because there is nothing they hate more than being accused of being wrong. Trust me on that one. And what the critics may hate even more is the fact that they have pretty much guaranteed that any harsh words they do direct towards the sequel will guarantee that it becomes a gold-plated DVD release, so wrong were they the first time out.

So what of that sequel?

Well, for a dyed-in-the-wool fan of the first movie, it is great. It takes everything that was welcome about the first film- the dark humour, and the willingness to self-parody that most critics both missed and aimed at Duffy as a wholly ironic accusation, the silly violence and Billy Connolly as a hitman. I loved the silliness of it all, and Duffy has brought it all back to the table, including an appearance by Judd Nelson of all people as a mob boss with a panic room. Brilliant, and Duffy doesnt hide the fact that we arent really supposed to take it that seriously:

We definitely poured on the cheese factor sometimes with the story, and frankly a lot of the characters, we pushed that humor a little bit farther than we did last time.

I would even go as far as to say that 'The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day' succeeds in places where the first failed. If the first movie was indeed a Tarantino parody (as many have said in hindsight)- and I dont mean that derrogatively- it took itself way too seriously, something that its sequel makes no attempt to re-achieve. This is balls out lunacy, and its one hell of a thrill ride, that a lot of people will probably hate. But isnt that sometimes the best indicator that you need to see a film? I have $50m in DVD sales that suggest it is.

There is admittedly an unfortunate void left by the departed Willem Dafoe, because he was such a fucking crazy focal point in the first movie, and the replacement, in the shape of Julie Benz's FBI agent Eugine Bloom just doesnt hit those high notes in the same way. It is even more of a shame that Benz seems aware of the fact that she can never live up to Dafoe's insane portrayal of Smeckers, and just tries to copy her way through her scenes, with a bad accent thrown in to boot.

Part of me wonders whether the attraction to the film is more about the cult associated with it, and the fact that I have wanted to see more of Troy Duffy's creations since I saw the film after a recommendation some years ago (the same route that most fans came to the film in fact). But it's only a small part, and I suspect I will be in the majority of fans of the original who come to love this new addition to the Boondock story.

But at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what I say- 'The Boondock Saints' is a bigger animal that critical reception will ever give it credit for, and the sequel will no doubt continue in that rich cult vein.

'The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day' is available right now on DVD and Blu-ray.