The Return of Boston's Patron 'Saints'

Have you heard of “The Boondock Saints”? Two Irish brothers enter a room full of Italian (or Russian) mobsters. Gothic techno plays in the background. In beautiful synchrony, the brothers shoot everyone and then place coins in the eyes of the dead. They cross themselves and say a prayer, bidding the soul of the dead a swift departure to their hellish punishment. And then they crack a joke and revel in how easy it all is—how fucking cool killing people can be.

If that story isn’t familiar, it might be because the movie came into the world—despite its copious number of gunshots—with a whisper. Opening in theaters right after Columbine, national anti-violent sentiment, combined with poor critical response, led to the shoot ’em up’s release being curtailed to a 1-week stay at only a handful of theaters; essentially, it went straight to video. Since then, however, it has acquired a bit of a cult, assaulting the hearts of adolescent boys and men across America. The film’s director, Troy Duffy, emphasized this in a recent interview. “Half of [the success of] ‘Boondock’ was one guy sitting the other guy down and saying ‘you gotta watch this.’”

Testament to the ardor of its fans and of the creative team behind it, the story is to be reiterated in wide release in a sequel, “The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day,” which opens today—fittingly, the weekend of All Saints Day.

The first film left off with the brothers, Connor (Sean Patrick Flanery) and Murphy MacManus (Norman Reedus), aided by their fresh-from-prison father (Billy Connolly), and a slick, sharp-tongued FBI agent, Paul Smecker (Willem Dafoe), killing off the head of the Yakavetta crime family in a courtroom. Though they lost their buddy Roc (David Della Rocca), a bumbling, Mafia delivery boy, in the process, they seemed well on their way to completing their mission of eliminating Boston’s “scum”: mobsters, pimps, drug dealers, in short, anyone who offends their sense of right. “All Saints Day” sees the brothers lured back to Boston from their Irish refuge by killings copycatting their coins-in-the-eyes trademark. Once again they find themselves embroiled in the Boston underworld, with no choice but to gleefully resume (stylishly) shooting up the city.

The city of Boston has a prominent role in the films. Duffy credits his roots with suffusing the film with a Bostonian aura that has attracted its fair share of New England fans. “This is where I’m from,” he said. “I’m a New Englander. I was trying to bring a Bostonian mentality.”

Though part of the film was shot in Toronto, Duffy believes that the onsite filming in Boston was essential. “Quincy Market, Fanueil Hall, you can’t fake that shit,” he declared. “As far as I’m concerned, fuck everywhere else.”

Yet the film doesn’t just appeal to Bostonians, but to audiences throughout the United Sates. Flanery is quick to explain the film’s appeal: it’s all about brotherhood. “Your best friend, when he gets in a fight, you just jump in, ‘You just hit my buddy!’ That is something everyone can relate to,” he says.

Duffy insists about the film is not about “unrequited homoeroticism” despite the amount of attention the camera lavishes on his actors’ muscular torsos.

The same fraternal dynamic rules the exchanges between the leading men and their director. During the interview, they were completely doubled over in laughter, ridiculing each other (“Your faggotry overwhelms me”) and trading inside-jokes (“Homoquizzical, you flaming homosensual”). Lighthearted if nonsensical banter predominated, as Flanery poked fun at Reedus, “I hear the Saints showed up and one of them wreaks havoc and the other one is a queer.”

But when the cameras were rolling, the cast claims they grew serious. “Everyone seemed to be there for love of the piece,” said Connolly, a veteran actor of 55 films, citing numerous extras who showed up to take part in the film, both in Toronto and Boston. The other actors confirmed their commitment to the project, which looks likely to encompass a third installment.

It surely is the wish of the director, who though he has been working on many other scripts, remains resolute in his affection for the “Boondock” franchise. He jokes of being ready for something else (“I got some ideas. I’d like to do some gratuitous sex movies now that we’ve plowed [gratuitous violence] into the ground”), but his first loyalty is to the MacManus twins.

“I’d like to make ‘Boondock’ for the rest of my life.”

—Staff writer Sanders I. Bernstein can be reached at sbernst@fas.harvard.edu.