I want to start by saying, I really liked the original Boondock Saints movie. I only watched it for the first time this past year, and that because my ex made me - it's his favorite movie and he wanted to share. But I really, really enjoyed it. Enough that I introduced Ozzmodious to it this past month or so, and he loved it too. So when we found a copy of Boondock Saints II: All Saint's Day on Blu-Ray at Target over the weekend, we had to get it RIGHTNOWOMG. So I'm not someone who's hated both of them, or who hates gun-porn movies, or whatever, just looking for excuses to tear this movie down. I went into this with high hopes, I really did.
I. Want. Those. Two. Hours. Of. My. Life. BACK. Now, please. Someone give me a time machine so I can go back in time to yesterday afternoon and spend my evening doing something more productive. Like reading MRA blogs. Or watching YouTube of Palin rallies. You know. Something that would enrich my life more and piss me off less than this movie did.
The entire thing might as well be replaced by scenes of men screaming at the top of their lungs, "OUR PENISES ARE ENORMOUS AND ENGORGED AND ALSO WE HAVE BALLLLLLZ THE SIZE OF CANTELOUPES, DO YOU NOT SEE HOW MANLY WE ARE YET? DO YOU NOT? WE ARE MEN, DAMMIT! MEN MEN MEN MEN MEN!" interspersed with scenes of random gunfights in slow motion, and the occasional shot of a stripper doing the "sexy businesswoman" look in towering stilettos while making sexyface and/or grinning seductively at the camera while her hair blows around her in slow motion a la Victoria's Secret commercials. Seriously. I have just described the movie, so if you haven't seen it, you can now spare yourselves the trouble and headache. Toss a buck in the tip jar on your way out. ;-)
For example. When the ONLY female character in the entire fucking movie is introduced, it's with a getting-out-of-car stilettos-and-stockings slow-motion strut to sexy music, which lasts for an egregiously and unnecessarily long 30 seconds before you even get to see that hey, she is not just a pair of perfectly-stockinged legs with black stripper heels on, walking around without a body! The first crime scene she does, she puts one of the (male) detectives on his knees in front of her, after taking down her hair and shaking it out all sexy-girl-like for no discernable reason, to "illustrate" a point. There are several his-face-her-crotch shots to make sure we get, HEY HE'S ON HIS KNEES IN FRONT OF SEXAY-LADY!! Her cleavage and legs are emphasized at EVERY. POSSIBLE. MOMENT. She is absolutely the Token Badass Sexy Lady. Yes, she is quite competent. But that takes a backseat to her being sexy. UGH.
But I think the worst part, the most ridiculous 3 or 4 minutes of film I have ever witnessed IN MY ENTIRE LIFE THUS FAR, was the Anxious Masculinity Montage, about 3/4 of the way through. In it, the two brothers are in a dream sequence with their dead friend Rocco, from the first movie. And they go on a rant about "real men" that is just...fucking.......there are no words. Seriously. Words fail me to describe that monstrosity. Just read it for yourself.
Connor MacManus, Murphy MacManus: Sláinte
Murphy MacManus: You know, he was sort of a badass though, wasn't he?
Connor MacManus: Shades of Eastwood. Charlie Bronson.
Rocco: Duke Fucking Wayne!
Connor MacManus, Murphy MacManus: Duke Fucking WAYNE!
Rocco: Men build things, then we die. It's in our fucking DNA! THAT'S WHAT WE DO!
Murphy MacManus: And when it all falls down?
Rocco: We build it right back up again.
Connor MacManus: But this time bigger. BETTER!
Rocco: Look! Look what we can do. Look how fuckin' beautiful we are. You think the men that built all this had it easy?
Murphy MacManus: Hard men!
Connor MacManus: Doing hard shit!
Rocco: and that gives me a hard on... But not in a gay way or anything like that.
Murphy MacManus: No, 'course not
Connor MacManus: Yeah it goes without sayin'
Rocco: I am so sick of all of this self help, twelve step, leftover hippie generation bullshit!
Connor MacManus: Now they don't want you to do anything, right? Just sit there. Don't drink.
Murphy MacManus: Don't smoke. Don't drive fast.
Connor MacManus, Murphy MacManus, Rocco: Kiss my ass!
Rocco: Fuck it! Do it all I say! Do you think Duke Wayne spent all of his time talking about his feelings with a fuckin' therapist?
Connor MacManus: There's no fucking way he did!
Rocco: John Wayne died with five pounds of undigested red meat in his ass. Now that's a man! Real men hide their feelings. Why?
Connor MacManus, Murphy MacManus, Rocco: Because it's none of your fuckin' business!
Rocco: Men do not cry. Men do not pout. Men jack you in the fuckin' jaw and say...
Detective Greenly: Thanks for comin' out.
And then they wake up and go kill more people. That chunk right there advanced the plot not a bit, contributed nothing to the pacing, seriously had NO purpose whatsoever except to make sure, in case you hadn't absorbed it well enough yet, that every single viewer understood that THIS IS A MEN'S MOVIE. And that by MEN they mean ONLY ADHERENTS TO TRADITIONAL VIOLENT-TOWER-OF-STOICISM MASCULINITY NEED APPLY.
If you wanted to be able to name a movie that perfectly encapsulated the Cult of Anxious Masculinity and the anti-feminist backlash, and Judd Apatow's body of work wasn't doing enough for you, this should be at the top of your list. I doubt we'll ever watch it again.
9 comments:
Ok, I agree, the speech was pretty um... yeah, overkill on an already testosterone driven film. Something more about the theme of vengeance for the victimized might have been more appropriate... But those were some awesome DE's they were packing!
Erg. Yeah. I saw something about this on TV recently and I was just looking at it in horror just from the small clip/preview I saw. Good to know the first one was better, though. I've always heard good things about it but after seeing the preview for the second one I was just in speechless shock.
@calvin - If I were to just turn off the feminist, social-justice-activist side of my brain and watch it, yeah, it's good gun porn. Pretty DE's, custom silencers and all that.
@AnAceWordsmith - I would highly recommend the first one. It's an awesome movie. Lots of swearing and gratuitous violence, but a great vigilante crusader movie. Well, TW for one scene where they accidentally shoot a cat cause they're drunk, and then one of the guys gets all threatening-DV on the woman he's staying with. But other than that, yeah, it's badass.
Gotta turn off that part of the brain sometimes, or else one would go mad. Too much bullshit in this world to always leave the filter on, eventually you gotta take it off and find a non-offensive relaxation to enjoy while you recharge your willpower.
@calvin - The thing is, I already DO go through life with it half-turned-off. That's one of the great myths about feminists, that we go through life with antennae constantly up. Because if we did that, we really would just go mad. So we - at least, I do - already go through life trying not to see the worst of it, all the time. In order for something to qualify for full filter-off just-relax-and-enjoy-it status, it has to already be nominally within the realms of possible enjoyment even WITH the filters on.
"Real men hide their feelings. Why?"
"Because it's none of your fuckin' business!" Hehehe i kind of like that :)
@Anon - It's kind of a funny one-liner, but remember it's coming after you've already sat through like an hour and a half of that sentiment. It's like, sweet merciful gods, can we see something OTHER than the ridiculous chest-pounding now? Moar bloody gunfights nao, plz. ;-)
LOL totally understandable :) But even though I am the first to say that i have absolutely no interest in these type movies, i too really enjoyed the original boondock saints movie :)
@Anon - The first one was awesome. I think that may be what went wrong with the second one. After the first was such a cult hit, the second had such high expectations it couldn't stand up under its own weight.
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