An Open Letter to Troy Duffy, Director of Boondock Saints 2.

Look. Before I start, we get it. You like to see gunfire in slow-motion. And you love bloody squibs popping from the chests of your racially insensitive bad buys. And you obviously have a fixation with making people say and do manly things in very manly ways using a lot of expletives to prove how large their dicks are. Got it, thanks.

But the thing is: you already did that. Remember, it was called The Boondock Saints, and it was pretty terrific. Did you really need to go and make a second one?

I’ll answer that for you.

No. 

No, you definitely did not. Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day acts as nothing more than a shout-out to the fact that you made a movie that some people liked ten years ago. You took the original, shoved in some more over exaggerated action sequences, turned the main characters into Irish versions of Inspector Gadget (minus the cool technology), brought back the supporting cast to read the same lines they read before, and replaced all of the dead cast with new dead weight.

There were no characters in your movie. There were only glimpses of people who would die, kill, or eventually call someone else a queer.

In Sunshine Cleaning, Clifton Collins Jr. played his character Winston, a handicapped sterile products salesman, with great subtlety and charm. I’m curious then, when Collins showed up on set for All Saints Day, did you make him re-watch that performance all day in a tiny room with the volume cranked up and the Spanish subtitles on? And then make him sit through twelve hours of Speedy Gonzalez cartoons?

And holy H.E. Double Hockeysticks, you replace Willem Dafoe’s Agent Smecker with that ridiculous collection of tit-wearing Southern witticisms? (Also, she was the worst part of the show Dexter. It’s like her job in show business is to take potentially wonderful things and ooze a deadly case of the terribles all over them.)

After watching two once-commendable actors play grab-ass and masturbate each other (mentally) on camera for two hours, I can see why Dafoe would want as little to do with this as possible. And yet, you somehow got him to show up for two minutes at the very end—for the purpose of…fuck, I dunno, something about faking his death in order to facilitate another horrible sequel? It’s at this point I’m forced at ask: do you have nude photos of Willem Dafoe banging an orangutan while force-feeding meth to a child laborer? I honestly don’t know how else he agreed to show up on set.

He can't even look you in the eyes...

I know, maybe he was so engulfed by the script that he was desperate to be included in the plot in any way possible? I mean, what’s not to love about this plot?

These things are not to love about the plot:

1)     The son of the mob boss who was killed by the boys in the last film is Judd Nelson...? (I’m not asking if that’s really Judd Nelson, I’m asking if it really had to be Judd Nelson?) He suddenly gets the urge to go after his father's killers. After 8 years. It took him 8 years to figure out he didn’t like that two dudes killed his dad? That’s just a poor family bond.

2)     Meanwhile, the boys have spent the last 8 years growing beards and playing hide the pickle with each other—though the last part is purely (accurate) speculation—in Ireland until they get news that someone killed a priest they used to know...or something. Annnnnd cue romantic comedy montage of trying on fancy dresses in a mirror while Hall & Oates plays in the background. Or something equally unnecessary and stupid.

3)     And that final conversation between Henry Fonda and Billy Connolly? You must have shot so many loads over that scene that both actors are now pregnant with scripts for Boondock Saints sequels. I’m sure you were aiming for an Oscar here but you got a fucking Elmo, guys. Sorry.

I’ve heard you say that you wanted to do another Boondocks movie “for the fans.” You wanted to “repay the fans putting clothes on [your] back for the last ten years.” But couldn’t it be that you wanted to do a sequel because you haven’t had a gig in ten years and need more clothes on your back? Well, hopefully the box office from this pays for some new threads from Farm & Fleet.

This wasn’t for the fans, Troy. This was two hours of homage to the first movie. A re-cut, regurgitated mess full of annoying new characters and bad accents.

Hopefully it’ll be longer than 10 years until you ruin your franchise even more.