Review of The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day (2009) by Stayce R — 27 Jul 2010

Just like every other "Boondock Saints" fan out there, I was desperately trying to like this move a lot. I really was. I was a huge fan of the original movie. It was funny, action packed, the acting was pretty excellent, and it's overall style was fairly brilliant. This movie takes all of that, and throws it right out the window. All of the unique style that the first installment had is completely absent in this movie. This film was just a stupid, mindless sequel, and I really couldn't be more disappointed.

So basically it's been like eight years, and the MacManus brothers, and their father, are in Ireland. They here that in Boston, a priest that they truly admired is dead, so they want revenge. They come out of retirement, and plan to kill whoever was involved. I was really expecting a better plot. This just seems like the same old stuff. I thought like the film would have to do with all of the MacManuses still killing criminals, and a bigger plot is unfolded, but this movie isn't like that, it's like okay here's more of what you saw in the last movie. The only difference is that this movie sucks.

So while the original movie had pretty amazing acting, this movie is just half-ass in the performance department. Sean Patrick Flanery didn't do a really good job here, and Norman Reedus acted as if he didn't have a care in the world. Billy Connolly had like 12 lines in this movie, so he didn't really do anything. The three detectives from the previous film have lost all of their charm. They are all just completely annoying this time around. Julie Benz...was completely atrocious. I think she single-handedly brought down any goodness that this film had a chance of having. She was complete garbage from start to finish. She was NOTHING like Willem Dafoe's character in the original, and she ruined the whole feel of the movie, and that truly pissed me off.

The shootouts, are again, just recycled from the original. All of the slow motion shooting in this movie, makes me bored, unlike in the original, where my eyes were wide open, and I was attached to the screen. In this film, the violence seems gratuitous, not entertaining, and again that's very disappointing.

I really loved how the original movie was shot. It had an awesome feel to it aesthetically, and that's one of the reasons I liked it so much. That's out the window too in this movie. It feels like I'm watching a direct to dvd film, that was filmed with a camcorder. That really made me upset, because the original was so artistically shot, and this one wasn't.

Like I said, I REALLY was trying hard to like this movie. The ending sequences actually brought up this movie a little bit, but the overall film was too horrible for it to change the overall feel of the movie. "The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day" was an extremely poor sequel, and for such a wonderful first installment, that's definitely more than disappointing.