The Boondock Saints (2001) - DVD Review

Film:
DVD:

Written by: Troy Duffy
Directed by: Troy Duffy
Starring: Willem Dafoe, Sean Patrick Flannery, Norman Reedus, David Della Rocco and Billy Connolly

Features:

• Audio Commentary with writer/director Duffy
• Cast Filmographies
• Deleted Scenes
• Outtakes
• Trailer

Released by: 20th Century Fox
Region: 1
Rating: R
Anamorphic: 2.35:1

My Advice: Own it

Conner and Murphy McManus (Flanery and Reedus) just want to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day with their friends at the local bar. They find out that the Russian mob is moving in and kicking the owner of the place out...that night. After killing a couple of the thugs, they decide that the wrath of God is flowing through their veins, so the two of them go on a Russian mob killing spree and become heroes to the people of Boston. An FBI agent named Smecker (Dafoe) begins following the trail of these two renegades and learns something about himself in the process.

This is a very clever movie. The writing is fun and quick and the action scenes fit nicely into the story without being too gratuitous. I also really liked the way the story was told: you saw the aftermath of one of their sprees then witnessed how it happened as Smecker put the story together from the evidence. Flanery and Reedus really made for believable twins and their onscreen chemistry made them endlessly charismatic. Dafoe's Smecker was quirky in his own way and was always full of surprises. For Troy Duffy's freshman effort, he really put together a wonderful story that left me wanting more.

Fox's DVD treatment is okay, but could have been a bit better. I've made it no secret that I'm a fan of the gag reel or outtakes on a DVD, but the ones here feel a bit staged. You get the feeling that they were done mostly as inside jokes. They are not your typical outtakes of screwups, but more shots of people screwing around on set. Don't get me wrong: they are funny, but I really like to see the moments where actors don't know where they are going next.

I wish they had put a director's commentary on the deleted scenes, because of the ones presented there were only a couple that I could really tell were deleted. They seemed more like alternate takes. If the rest of them were different than what was in the film, I couldn't see how. It would have been nice to hear Duffy's comments on them. The feature commentary, though, is really quite good. You really get the idea of how much fun he had making this film and how much respect he has for the other artists that he collaborated with. As always the cast filmographies are simply text on screen, but it's the same information you can get from pretty much anywhere on the internet.

I'd say that the film's good enough to own on DVD, so it's recommended to save shelfspace for it.

• Click here to buy it from Amazon.