'The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day' review

Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flanery (Credit: Apparition )

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Ten years after wiping out Boston's mafia bosses, vigilante twins turned local heroes Connor (Sean Patrick Flanery) and Murphy (Norman Reedus) have gone into hiding on a sheep farm in Ireland. When news breaks that a Boston priest was killed by someone impersonating the twins, the boys ditch the Bo Peep life for a gun-crazy homecoming to avenge the priest's murder. They also like to spout religious mumbo-jumbo before killing people, and look smashing in slow-mo shootouts.

The buzz: There's no shortage of rabid fans of the original "Boondock Saints," which was released for only two weeks in 1999 in a handful of theaters, but snowballed into a cult hit on video. Apparently, it has inspired drinking games and tattoos of the stars' mugs. It was also the catalyst for a contentious documentary about "Boondock" director Troy Duffy called "Overnight," which depicted him as an egomaniacal boozer.

The verdict: Hey guys, God wants those saint permits back, pronto. Like its predecessor, "Boondock" 2.0 thinks it's way cooler than it looks and more badass than it really is. Duffy revels in unleashing sequence after sequence of operatic shootouts and oooh-wow action stunts (really, boys, must you do front flips when making an entrance?). But what it all amounts to is a sludge of hackneyed clichés, from goofy police sidekicks to a femme fatale FBI investigator (Julie Benz from "Dexter") to hellfire-and-brimstone choir music. The tone is certainly darker than the original's—it is, after all, a revenge story—yet "Boondock" tries so hard to canonize its saints as legit action heroes that all those put-on sneers become more camp that cult. The devoted can slap the word "cult" all they want onto "Boondock Saints," but that doesn't change the fact that it's just a B-movie in need of some divine intervention.

Did you know? The original "Boondock Saints" script was snapped up by Harvey Weinstein at Miramax, who reportedly canned the project after a casting dispute.

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