It’s great to see that lightning captured in a bottle, and I think Duffy did that with the first movie. Just enough pinache, budget, quirky scripting that totally didn’t rip off Tarantino and fun actors to pull off an entertaining story, regardless how ridiculous it may ultimately be. So if you follow that up, better make it a banger. Here? A good effort. But try as you might to escape remaking the same movie, well… It is still true to the core though, a couple of brothers and revenge and gratuitous violence, but with a chick FBI agent wearing the skirt this time.
Eight years after the Boys Murphy and O’Connor and their Da meted out their Boston justice, they disappear like a wisp of petey Irish smoke. But a signal is made back stateside, a murdered priest. The boys were already feeling a little restless. So ditching their Irish sheepfarm, back to Boston to start a new round of hallowed justicings. They may pick up an exceptionally fast Mexican along the way. There’s also one Johnny Dangerously kinda crime fellow, at least verbally. And an FBI agent that has an uncanny knowledge about what the Boys’ motivations might be against the vengeful thugs finally creepin’ up the courage again after the first round of ass-kickins.
I obviously dug the original movie, kind of put off watching this because, well, reality. I was hopin. And it is a nice little playout of the next chapter here. A few fun bits of dialogue. And where the characters in the first may have seemed a bit ‘eccentric,’ here they’re almost a bit too comical. The new FBI chick Julie Benz is a bit overplayed. Or maybe a lot overplayed. Same for their new buddy Romeo. And their 3 cop buddies still in the department. But ultimately it’s still a fine-enough balance of somewhat juvenile humor and revenge, or should I say “redemption” story, with a few fun bullety sequences like its predecessor, and some awkward dialogue about prison rape and grandma’s drapes and maybe a cock sandwich, no homo.
