"Make like a tree and....."

I would say that this film has attained legendary cult status among new college grads and current college students. The film was released in 1999, was postponed because of the tragic Columbine shootings, but is now considered a hit after being shown in a lot of American colleges. Yes, it is “Boondock Saints.”

There are many attractive features to this hyper violent flick: a growing preference for non traditional plot, a bad ass soundtrack with catchy and haunting lyrics, the vibrantly offensive vocabulary, absurd violent circumstances, adamant religion and an ultimately ambiguous morality. Boondock Saints is an exceptional 90s film. The film was made as we transitioned into the millenium and promoted an alternative, and sometimes irreverent perspective.

I must mention that this film was made after Quentin Tarantino’s acclaimed “Pulp Fiction (1994),” which shares many of the facets listed above. Tarantino’s motive seems to be popularizing  B movie irregularities by using weird details and darkly disturbing twists in his films. He started his bizarre film-making career in the early 90’s with “Reservoir Dogs” (think that “Stuck in the middle with you” musical garage scene), and continued to surprise the status quo with comical and brutal behavior in Pulp Fiction. A friend of mine criticized  “Boondock Saints” for trying too hard to be like a Tarantino flick. To a point, I agree.  SPOILERS ALERT! The narrative structure, random dialogues and superfluous expletives of “Boondock Saints”  follows Tarantino’s formula, along with their strange props (using the toilet as a weapon) and cartoonic gore,  in the case of the cat. Both films treat violence without consequence, and as a source of comedy at times: “Let’s kill everyone!”

The difference between the two is that Tarantino immerses the audience in a gritty world of dangerous people, and we root for them akin to “The Godfather” or “Bonnie and Clyde.” “Boondock Saints” also provides realistic characters in their violent acts but the film focuses more on orchestrating (quite literally too) the mood of the situations and the structure of the plot. I’m not suggesting that Tarantino’s films are devoid of meaning, only that the audience is aware that they are becoming part of Tarantino’s alternative world for awhile. “Boondock Saints,” while stylistic as well,  the protagonists are not assassins, mob bosses or people who rob banks. Murphy and Connor are ordinary, working class individuals, going to Sunday mass and trying to survive on a slaughterhouse salary. They seem to have sort of a mission that benefits other people as well, even if it is unorthodox.  The audience can identify with their needs on a basic level, and do not need to worship a hero or anti hero that often is not seen in our own ordinary lives like in “Pulp Fiction.”

During my most recent viewing of “Boondock Saints,”  I observed that Murphy and Connor compare their surroundings (like a wall of guns to choose from) or circumstances to the movies. They literally state, that in the films, the situations are to be executed a certain way. They seem to want to pretend and glorify their conquests too, by leaving their mark on their victims with the coins on the eyes. Also, the murders they commit are not completed according to plan, especially if David Della Rocco is involved; therefore, they succeed in murdering the bad guys despite the chaotic nature that they create. Their imperfections appeal to the audience because it reminds us of our own, if we were in their situation, pretending, like the brothers have been doing the entire film. So many movies are about the plan, the characters setting up the plan, following the steps of the plan smoothly, the sigh of relief that they have completed the plan while dodging minor obstacles. But the saints seem to keep messing up the plan they have choreographed, murder the mafias and seem to stay free from harm.

Here is a scene where the plan goes awry:

And the music makes it seem like a performance.

To continue the hyperbolic performance theme, the plot is set up as if you were viewing a live show like theater, opera or the symphony. Music is even coalesced with the plot structure to show off the violence and help figure out the way it occurred, especially in Willem Dafoe’s case. The plot is character study (peppy Irish music), conflict, trying to figure out what happened by crime scene clues (Dafoe’s opera music), flashback to the murder scene (kickass music), and the outcome for the two brothers. REPEAT!  And there’s that haunting catchy song they play after the brothers have prayed and are going to murder some mafia members.  

The ending continues to demonstrate aspects of a performance because there are interviews from random people about the brothers mission to kill evil doers. The movie asks for audience participation by confronting  different people’s perspective on the issue. The most popular response is no comment, but other answers display the ambiguity of the violence with people for and against the saints’ behavior. The movie ending polls the audience about the individual’s position in society, looping back to the opening scene’s beginning story of Kitty Genovese. For those who don’t know, Genovese was raped and stabbed to death within earshot of her neighbors, and none of them called the police. The beginning and ending scenes are a dichotomy of the paths that the individual chooses to play if they witnessed someone who needed help- indifference or  the extreme action that the saints take.  The opposing positions are trying to get the audience take part in their society and discuss the right thing to do if someone does not receive justice. Are we  really turning into a society that doesn’t care about others around us?

College students are watching this film when they  are away from home for the first time, formulating the career they want and exploring the person they want to be. The no comment people in the ending define an apathy that is more widespread than holding  an opinion and serving justice to those it is deserved. College students are also on a search for morality, because for the first time they can make their own rules and try the things that their parents discouraged them to. Why not help this journey with an entertaining action movie?

So. “Boondock Saints” is a violent, irreverent action performance / backwards morality tale. A great end to the 90’s, because America was actually welcoming diverse perspectives, strengthening women’s roles, and heading towards globalization. Makes sense that our films would reflect that.  They also prided themselves on being culutrally diverse. Even though these two can be very offensive with their torrid racial comments, the dialogue works to expunge stereotypes. For example, in “Pulp Fiction” Pumpkin (Tim Roth) calls the waitress at the diner “Garcon!” to get her attention. He had just  been racial profiling a slew of different cultures with Honey Bunny, and wants a coffee refill. The waitress arrives with the coffee and corrects him, because “Garcon” means boy in French. In this situation, the waitress represents the more aware, modern 90’s culture while Pumpkin represents the old, racist ideas that really are showing off his ignorance as we started becoming more knoweldgeable about different countries in the 90’s. “Boondock Saints” also shows the positive impact of diveristy. Though there is David Della Rocco’s racist Coca Cola joke and the semi- segregated mafias, Connor and Murphy are well versed in several languages as shown in their first meeting with Willem Dafoe’s character. I might even suggest that the first meeting scene heavily influenced Tarantino, as his 2009 historical fantasy “Inglourious Bastards” is barely English but  predominately French and German.

Both Tarantino and “Boondock Saints” have portrayed these elements in their films. They have taught us to see the film medium in new narrative views and plot structure, “Boondock Saints” favors the performance choreography and Tarantino prefers to keep varying the structure in each of his films. Other films have followed “Pulp Fiction” and “Boondocks Saints” with their experimentation of  structure, like “Lucky Number Slevin” and “Memento.”

But they were the two that paved the new way to tell a story artistically and non-traditionally, and it was a profound statement.