The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day (2009)

Eight years after the MacManus twins last cleared a Boston courtroom of its mobster element, Troy Duffy returns them to the screen with the enthusiasm of a man who has been waiting by the phone. The brothers are tending sheep in Ireland, their father is tending grudges, and a murdered priest in Boston demands their particular brand of rosary-accompanied gunplay. Critics greeted the result with a 23 percent approval rating, and Roger Ebert allowed that the cinematography was superb before calling the screenplay an idiotic ode to macho horseshite. That verdict remains difficult to dispute. The sequel is louder, longer, and more pleased with itself, which for a cult property is either a feature or a diagnosis.

The cultural inventory is thinner than the body count. A Mexican fighter named Romeo joins the brothers as a sidekick, and a Black detective, played by an actor named Bob Marley, works the case alongside two colleagues, but neither presence carries any commentary about identity or representation. FBI Agent Eunice Bloom, a protegee of the late Paul Smecker, is the most capable person in any room, and the film never stops to congratulate itself for this, which keeps the feminist reading at a low simmer. Doc McGinty, the pub owner, has a stutter and Tourette syndrome, and the film treats this as texture instead of a lesson. There is no queer content, no environmental concern, no body positivity, and no revisionist history. The villains are mobsters and a duplicitous old friend, not board members, so the violence never becomes an economic argument. The moralizing that does exist concerns vigilante justice and Catholic faith, an older sermon entirely.

By the standards of modern social consciousness, this is a relic of a coarser era, and it seems content to remain one. It asks nothing of the audience except a tolerance for slow-motion executions and Irish ballads. The result offends critics and satisfies devotees in equal measure, a closed loop of fan service with no interest in the wider conversation. We file it accordingly, with a weary nod and a note that the sheep were the most progressive element on screen.