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After spending years in development hell The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day finally sees the light of day. And as a great surprise a lot of characters from the first movie show up again including the popular Rocco despite being killed in the first one. Don’t worry, he’s just in two dream sequences so the plot doesn’t jump the shark by bringing him back with some sorry excuse. This movie is probably the closest thing fans were hoping for. It’s no Godfather, but so wasn’t the first one. The only thing this movie has against it are the extremely high anticipations people had after all these years.
The original was a small independent movie, made on a small budget and almost didn’t have a theatrical run. The run that it did had was small. But somehow, through the magic of word of mouth, The Boondock Saint gathered a following on DVD generating $50,000,000.- in sales and within a couple of years people began shouting for a sequel. This was their movie, those movies you own on DVD and talk to your friends about: “Hey, have you ever seen this movie, it’s cool man. C’mon let’s watch it”. I own a couple of these kinds of films: Mallrats, Clerks and Cube for instance. Movies nobody has ever seen one piece of promotion for but only watches them because they are recommended. I watched Mallrats with a friend the other day, he loved it.
The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day is partially a rehash of the previous movie as well as a continuation. The boys are now living in Ireland with their father Il Duce after their public execution of a mobster in the end of part 1. When the news reaches them that they’re being accused of the murder of a priest back in Boston they decide to go back and clear their names. On board of a ship they befriend a skilled Mexican fighter who recognizes them and decides to join them. He takes up Rocco’s position which was open since he was shot in the first movie. Once back in Boston we meet up with a string of familiar faces and a new FBI agent who has to solve the murder cases that are piling up. This time a sexy female agent named Eunice played by Julie Benz.
What follows is a series of violent and funny confrontations and a lot of back story to the character of Il Duce, still played by Billy Connolly. Other than that the movie is really taking the first movie as a template and just renaming the characters. Romeo, the new Mexican Saint provides the same comic relief Rocco did, the same police officers are still on the case, as hapless as ever. The shotting are all presented in flashback once more as Eunice reconstructs what happened on the crime scene, just like Dafoe did in the previous film.
Despite being a bit repetive and too much of a rehash of the first film the movie is very entertaining and especially fans of the first film will probably be satisfied. I liked the new character of Eunice even though she’s no Paul Schmecker. But then again Eunice is far more easy on the eyes than Dafoe.
The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day feels like a reunion with old friends with whom you swap stories from back in the day: while satisfying it does not bring anything new to the table, but it does make you feel full.
