Movie review: “Boondock Saints” sequel is bloody bad

Cult classics, such as Ed Wood's films and "Showgirls," are often defined by their flaws as much as their merits.

"Boondock Saints," the 1999 film that achieved cult status on DVD and now has spawned a sequel, certainly had plenty of flaws.

It was a ridiculously over-the-top action film about a pair of Irish-American twins who set out with guns and some reckless and boozy bravado to rid Boston of criminals and Mafia.

Like its new sequel, "Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day," it's a terrible movie.

But for all its warts, the original did have the hallmarks of a film made by an actual person - an increasingly rare sight in the slick, corporate-made blockbusters of today's Hollywood. That person is writer-director Troy Duffy, a former Los Angeles bartender.

Ten years after the release of "Boondock Saints," Duffy has reunited his cast for "All Saints Day." The film opens with the two MacManus brothers (Sean Patrick Flanery, Norman Reedus) on a hillside in Ireland herding sheep.

Along with Poppa M (Billy Connolly), they are lying low. The last time they were seen in public (at the end of the first film), they killed a mob boss in the middle of a courtroom.

The brothers are soon pulled back to Boston, hell-bent on avenging the murder of a local priest.

Catholicism runs deep throughout "Boondock Saints": The MacManus brothers boast huge tattoos of Jesus on their backs, chant spooky-sounding Scripture and always pray over the bodies of their victims.

Like its predecessor, "All Saints Day" laments a society full of red tape and a culture dominated by the "self-help, 12-step generation."

Violence is necessary to clean our cities, the films say. It's time, one character remarks, "to get your Irish on."

Cloaking vigilante justice (not to mention casual racism and homophobia) in religion eventually turns "Boondock Saints" from merely a bad movie into a distasteful one.