The Boondock Saints: Sublime Satire

The Boondock Saints: Sublime Satire

When The Boondock Saints came on tv yesterday, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. Roommate J insisted on watching it; it was totally hot shit to everyone in her high school when it came out. I pointed out that, of course it was hot shit, they were high school students.

The first time I saw The Boondock Saints (in high school, surprise), I was appalled at what I believed was a deeper reading of the film, a reading that saw the moral of the film being “if you believe someone is ‘evil’ you have the god-given right to kill them”, an ethic that seems to have driven every genocide, crusade, pogrom, and general bit of ideologically-driven nastiness in the history of the human species. It’s a superhero movie, except all the messy fascism issues that superhero stories entail (1) are written off because the superheroes’ actions are ordained by God himself. And instead of defeating their victims they brutally murder them. It’s like somebody watched Taxi Driver and missed the point entirely.

So I was understandably a bit cringy seeing it come on again. Amidst much griping (and being told to “blog it”) I sat through the movie. First reaction: wow, Willem Defoe is awesome. The second: The reading I took of the film in high school wasn’t deep enough. This time around I saw The Boondock Saints for something more than a moral abomination: a sublime piece of satire that pulls no punches, and makes its point even more extremely than even Taxi Driver. (2)

The film begins with our heroes & friends torturing some Russian gangsters for trying to close down the Irish pub they drink at. When the gangsters attempt to return the favor, they are killed. A pair of thugs killing another pair of thugs somehow becomes celebrated by the masses in the newspaper as an honorable act, the work of saints. The first pair (the heroes) get it into their heads after a religious experience that they have the right to decide who should be killed and who should live. They kill the bosses of the Russian thugs and run into one of their drinking-buddies in the process, a low-level thug who decides to join them after a little persuasion.

And I do mean "a little". It was the persuasion scene and what immediately followed that convinced me of the true satirical nature of the film. The thug raises the objection that every sane member of the audience has at this point, namely “uh, you’re randomly killing people you think are ‘evil’? Isn’t that a little messed up?” Our heroes spout about 30 seconds of garble about how innocent people come home to their wives and children while bad men get away with being bad (3) and the thug is utterly, totally persuaded of the righteousness of their cause. This scene is immediately followed by a montage, in the SAME DAMN ROOM, of the three of them getting drunk, eating pizza, and playing with their knives and firearm. Truly, these are the people I would trust with the right to determine who lives and who dies. The montage ends with a gun accidentally going off killing a roommates’ cat, but hey, that’s okay, because the roommates are drug-addicted prostitutes, and drug-addicted prostitutes aren’t people.

Like I said, it’s very difficult not to read this as epically hilarious satire. The movie continues with our heroes killing Bad Men and getting away with it. Willem Defoe is continually astounded at their awesomeness, and the only person who comes close to taking them out is revealed to be their long-lost father, who promptly joins them. At some point along the way they’re captured and their thug friend is killed. We’re supposed to feel sad about this.

The final scene features the Big Bad Guy in the courtroom, oh that ineffectual justice system, letting Big Bad Men do whatever they want with its due process and legal rights. Our heroes, teaming up with daddy and Willem Defoe (he's so inspired by their divine vigilantism he’s decided to join them), storm into the courtroom with guns drawn, admonish the jurors and court attendees not to kill, walk up to the Big Bad Guy, say their little prayer (4), and blow his goddamn head off.

They are celebrated as heroes (5), and once again nicknamed saints by the media. Really? Heroes? This is so far from the actual reception these terrorists would get in real life it must be an exaggeration for the point of satirical commentary. And oh, this movie takes itself so deathly seriously. Like any good fascist flick, ie The Triumph of Will or 300, the more seriously it took itself the funnier it got. Further enlivening the satirical humor is the fact that critical roles of the film are played by, among others, a well-known male porn star and a Scottish comedian. QED.


(1) Issues deftly dealt with in Watchmen (the graphic novel, skip the movie) and the Dark Knight.

(2) Actually, it’s not, the director/writer is a nasty, abusive, alcoholic with an extremely simplistic worldview, (as told in this documentary Overnight) but a movie can be a hell of a lot more than its auteur intended. For example, Inglorious Basterds has a hell of a lot more to it than Tarantino intended, he just wanted to make a rah-rah revenge film where he could beat up some Nazis.

(3) Not an oversimplification

(4) Before every murder they say a dramatic prayer about how they are the shepards of the Lord protected by His grace, neatly paralleling the prayers the apostles uttered before going on all those badass killing sprees in the New Testament.

(5) If the satirical Taxi Driver parallel wasn’t obvious already, the ending should make it pretty blatant