By “those kind of movies” I mean those films that are pseudo-smart and pseudo-deep, presenting paper-thin messages as an excuse for rampant style and gratuitous everything: sex, violence and the like. Films like Lucky Number Slevin, Running Scared, Smokin Aces and many more. It’s style over substance through and through, but the filmmakers wouldn’t have you know it, because they do not know it themselves. These are all passionate films made by passionate artists, much like those modern artists who mess up a bed and are proud to call it art or stream a 30-second film reel continuously while obstructing the viewfinder with objects (like a tree branch or something) to distort and abstract the cellulite on display. It’s kitsch and style and pretension personified, and the thought process behind goes as far as the art itself, no matter how deep the passion.
Which brings us back to The Boondocks Saints, which, for this moment in media, serves as the kingpin of those kinds of movies. As a matter of fact, it’s been the kingpin of those kinds of movies for some time. Since the infamous box office failure of both the film and the filmmaker (one Troy Duffy), Saints has gathered a cult following worthy of its own religion (which is ironic when you consider the skewed Catholic plot elements, but I digress).
The film itself is a fun-to-watch, poorly shot, decently written, haphazardly directed little action thing that offers its art in only one color: blood red. There’s nothing deep about the tale of two Irish “brudders” presumably called by God to murder all the criminals of Boston, jumping off a line a priest utters in the opening scene of the film, that the worst kind of evil is “the indifference of good men.”
These men are certainly not indifferent. And neither are they good. They are murderers and they murder brutally, creatively and passionately which, in a way, is a metaphor for the way Duffy handles his own material on screen. His cuts are incoherent and his lines heavy-handed (full of “fucks” and “cunts” and gay jokes and stereotypes, no matter how clever they’re delivered) and the timeline of his beloved story jumps from past to present and back.
How about the “There was a time” speech Bruce Willis’ hitman Mr. Goodkat delivers at the beginning of Lucky Number Slevin. Doesn’t it feel like Pulp Fiction-for-stupid people? Like the writer (Jason Smilovic) wanted really bad to make a Tarantino movie and someone decided this script was good enough and they even got one of the actors who was in Pulp Fiction to be in it. This all looks really good on paper and even the trailer for Slevin promised something hip and new and stylishly smart – hell, even the Weinsteins got behind – the same people who got behind Tarantino.
Unfortunately, the story is surface level and the characters are too. In Tarantino’s early films, the film was style and the dialogue was too, but the characters were enigmas viewers wanted more from and wanted to know more about. Who was Vincent Vega and what was that book he was reading the moment he got shot? Why Mr. White care so much about Mr. Orange? And how much love does Robert Forster’s Max Cherry have for Jackie Brown that he’ll go to the lengths he does for her? While Tarantino rarely offers his character’s backstory, his characters suggests something deeper than the sum of their lines. Who can say that about the Josh Hartnett hero from Lucky Number Slevin?
The most interesting thing in Slevin by way of character interaction is Slevin’s romance with a super-cute Lucy Liu, and even that leaves much to be desired.
In Saints, the most interesting character interaction was Willem Dafoe’s Paul Smecker with ANYBODY ELSE. Unfortunately, Dafoe’s the only player not returning for The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, which is set to come out on October 30th. Luckily, Duffy wrote in another character who is apparently Smecker’s “protege,” one Eunice Bloom (played by Dexter squeeze Julie Benz). Not to discredit Benz, who does good work on Dexter and is often one of the most enjoyable parts, aside from the gratuitous violence, of B-schlock like Rambo and Punisher: War Zone (as I write this, I realize that Benz may have been perfect casting for this sure-to-be gratuitously violent sequel), but Dafoe is a force of a performer who’s style is not easily comparable to anyone else.
Does Duffy believe that Dafoe was fueled by the written character completely? That the obsessed line delivery and homoerotic excitement came from the script to screen and that Dafoe was merely a conduit?
Watching Overnight, a documentary chronicling the rise and fall of Duffy, it’s not hard to believe the answer to the above questions is yes.
And if the answer is yes, then we should not expect much more than much more of the same from All Saints Day. Sure, it may (most likely will) be fun and bloody and there will probably even be a considerable amount of nudity and sex, but please don’t walk feeling as though you’ve learned something.