Movies I Loved That Are Actually Bad: The Boondock Saints

Quick little fact check: Genovese was attacked at 2:30 a.m. outside her Queens apartment and—despite her case being an oft-used example of no one doing anything to help because they think someone else will, it was later revealed that multiple neighbors called the police. But why let “truth” get in the way when you have sweeping shots of Boston set to “The Blood of Cu Chulainn” to get to? Besides, it’s the Genovese story (coupled with a bizarre encounter with the Russian mob) that inspires the McManus brothers to become vigilantes and murder people they—based on a very wishy-washy standard—deem too evil to live. You might ask how they could be inspired when they didn’t even stay to hear the end of the sermon, but who knows and who cares? We have a variety of ethnic, gay, and disabled cartoons to meet, so let’s get going!

Among these cartoons is FBI agent Paul Smecker (a far-too-good-for-this Willem Dafoe), a detective savant with an equal passion for opera and cock. At one point, he slaps his lover and calls him a “faggot,” but in this world, that only makes him nuanced. Smecker first encounters the brothers when they turn themselves in after shooting/beating a couple men to death with the lid of a toilet (in self-defense, duh) and after a brief interrogation, they’re free to go. IT’S GOOD TO BE WHITE IN BOSTON, BABY! As the brothers grow more confident with—well—cold-blooded murder, Smecker is on their trail (though he doesn’t quite know who he’s trailing yet). Helping the McManuses in their mission to carry out justice is supposedly lovable buffoon Rocco (David Della Rocco), a package boy for the Italian mob who often feels emasculated because people like his boss—a mafioso who says the n-word a lot, because otherwise how would you, idiot audience member, get that he’s bad?—and the boss’s number two (a fellow frequent user of the n-word played by Ron Jeremy) think he’s nothing more than a clown. (They’re soon proven right.)

Rocco—infuriated by his superiors—shoots up a diner where the mobsters eat, but before that, he accidentally kills his girlfriend’s cat, something he’s not particularly sorry about. The cat is not gendered, but if it’s a girl, then she is the first female to appear on screen in the 45 minutes since the beginning of the film after Murphy punches a humorless lesbian feminist (played by Dot-Marie Jones) in the face. A speaking human woman doesn’t appear until the girlfriend and her friend ask about the whereabouts of the cat and Rocco points a gun to their heads. (THIS is funny because the women are drug addicts, lol.)

At this point in the film, there’ve been so many bad jokes (jokes I once admittedly knew by heart) and nonsensical decisions (both artistic and otherwise) that I was ready to turn the movie off—but then I got the idea for this column and carried on (much, I imagine, like the cast and crew of The Boondock Saints) out of obligation and good work ethic.

Another woman eventually appears on camera, this one a stripper, who is allowed to speak, though she passes out from fear immediately thereafter, after which Rocco sexually assaults her by groping her breast as she lies there unconscious. The McManus brothers—princes of morality and angels of death—have no real problem with this. Rocco promises to tip her. Everyone has a good laugh.

But the end comes for Rocco soon enough. His rebellion against his mob bosses catches up with him and he’s shot through the chest and dies. (Hope they tipped him!) It’s almost the end for the McManus bros, too, only guess what? The hitman ends up being… THEIR DAD? Record scratch. (Willem Dafoe’s there too, dressed like a lady in order to woo the guards and also because he’s gay. Remember he’s gay? Gay, and a detective? A gay man with a job that’s not “interior designer” or “hairdresser?” God, this movie is subversive.)

The familial bond is discovered not because the father (Billy Connolly), recently out of prison, recognizes his sons, but because he recognizes their family prayer as the brothers pray over dead Rocco’s dead body. (Perhaps because this whole film is set up to make you believe that bad guys deserve to die, I’m not that sad about this one dying!) As such, the brothers team up with their dad AND their cop zaddy Willem Dafoe to murder the mafia don during a trial at the courthouse. Yes, it all tracks. This penultimate scene is extremely powerful because (1) it features the film’s first black character, a judge, and (2) because of the way Norman Reedus pronounces “rape” as “rehp” with his learned Irish accent.

At the time of its release, The Boondock Saints was a critical disaster. Not only did Miramax drop the film after Duffy and Weinstein proved to be equally volatile partners (as demonstrated in the documentary Overnight), but it also came out in the aftermath of Columbine, a time when America was still fazed by mass shootings and wasn’t particularly keen on watching two men in all black shooting up people who they thought deserved to die. But in the following years, it gained a cult following that eventually turned mainstream, resulting in high DVD sales (16-year-old me can shoulder some blame for that) AND a sequel in 2009.

This has been Movies I Loved That Are Actually Bad.