WHY I DON'T LIKE BOONDOCK SAINTS

I don't like Boondock Saints.
There.
I said it.
I know people out there who would knife me for saying this. People who I know, and people who I feel comfortable around, otherwise. But something about this movie drives people nuts. Fanatically nuts.
I don't know what it is.
I mean, sure, there are a few things: it's an 'empowering' movie where two really attractive Irish guys shoot a bunch of people and then there's an eccentric detective, but other than those shiny surface features, there's not much to this movie.
Not only that, but there are things about this movie that straight up suck (Or, at least, straight up suck in MY opinion. But we all know I'm a prick.) In the interest of 'I-need-to-vent-this,' here is an enumerated list:

1. CHARACTERIZATION
What do we know about the Irish brothers?
A list:

a. They are Irish.
b. They are Brothers.
c. They have skills that Rambo would envy, leading me to believe they were really unactivated sleeper-agents placed by the Soviet Union. But this is just a conjecture.

So who are they?
I have no clue. They are fun-loving Irish people that live in Boston. They like to drink. They are Catholic.
These are character traits that define maybe a good eight tenths of Boston's population. In other words, there is nothing special or unique, or even personable about the characters. There is nothing here that an audience can relate to.
Why does this matter?
Because when an audience can't relate to a character, the audience doesn't care. It's the difference between someone on the evening news that was arrested for shooting people, and your friend telling you about that one time he got arrested for peeing on a cop car. One story may be infinitely more exciting, but for some reason we're much more interested in our friend's urinary habits.
In short, I just didn't care about the Irish brothers. I can't even remember their names. To me, they seemed completely interchangeable.

And the father? Who the fuck was he? I mean, seriously, what the fuck was the point of the father in this movie? He had nothing to do with the plot! He was working for the mafia, and then he heard his kids saying a prayer, and I guess he changed his mind about working for the mafia because then he started shooting the shit out of them. Really, his only purpose was to help the Irish Brothers at the end so they didn't die. Otherwise, he was without a name, a personality, or any defining characteristics besides four guns and a rad pair of shades.

The one character that I cared about in the movie was the detective. He was interesting! He wasn't particularly well thought-out, and I wasn't sure why he did some of the things he did--specifically, when he shouts "THERE WAS A FIRE! FIIIIGHT!" and things like that--but at least he was a person that wasn't like all the other people in Boston. My biggest problem with the detective was the fact that the movie wasn't about him. The movie basically ignored everything about him that had been established.

Which leads into:


2. PLOT/CONFLICT
I know, I know- "Two Irish guys decide to stick it to the Mafia because a mafia underling tells them that they can totally do it, and God tells them to, also. Then there is an eccentric detective that tries to track them down and ends up helping them. Also their father is hired by the mafia to kill them, but ends up joining them."
Sure, there's a through-line here. Irish guys kill Italian guys. I can get behind that. The real question for me is, where is the conflict?
And don't tell me that it's Irish Brothers that Shoot People. Guns aren't conflict. Guns are tools that are sometimes used as a result of conflict. The Irish Brothers are about as far away from conflict as you can possibly get.

Before I go any further, I feel like I should explain what I mean when I say 'conflict.'
When I say 'conflict,' I'm talking ideals.
Wars aren't fought because people shoot at each other- wars are fought because one side has a different idea of what's "Right" than the other does. The shooting comes after.
On an individual level, this manifests itself through a character who has two irreconcilable ideas and has to decide which to favor. In the case of multiple characters, this manifests itself through one set facing off against the other set because the two have irreconcilable ideals. The common thread here is 'irreconcilable ideals' leading to 'conflict.'

This is why I say the Irish Brothers are without conflict: they are completely resolute in their cause, and their cause is shooting bad-guys. There is no conflict there; no chance for dialogue between opposing forces, no change, and ultimately no humanity. Not even complexity. Not even a plot, really.

Here, of course, there is the argument that the detective represents the conflict of the movie. And I would totally agree with that. And then I would point out the fact that he doesn't really matter, in the end.
His entire investigation culminates in a conflict: does he pursue the Brothers? Or does he let them go, and betray his entire identity as a representative of the law?
This is an excellent conflict. It calls into question the Detective's sense of purpose, his identity, and his ultimate goal. He tears himself up inside after finding out who the killers are, because--despite himself--he actually agrees with what they're doing.
And then he decides to let them go, and we don't really hear from him ever again. It was as if an entire half of the movie just didn't matter. His whole investigation just stopped in its tracks and didn't have any bearing on the actual plot of the movie.
The detective spent the first four fifths of the movie playing catch-up, and then stopped because it turns out that--despite all evidence to the contrary--he didn't disagree with the Brothers at all. His cop-side gave up without a fight. The Brothers really couldn't care less, in the end. Though he did cross-dress in one scene, which was funny because men don't dress like that.
My big problem with the detective was that the only interesting conflict in the movie was completely and wholeheartedly aborted. The detective didn't once look back to remember that, yes, actually, he was a detective and the Irish Brothers were breaking the law in a serious way.

Which leads me to my third point:

3. ANYBODY WHO DISAGREES WITH THIS MOVIE IS A PUSSY.

The biggest thing that pisses me off about this movie is the end credits where they show everybody's varying opinions on whether or not the Irish Brothers are doing the right thing.
It pisses me off because the entire movie just showed that the Irish Brothers are doing the right thing, and the audience should agree because we're supposed to sympathize with the Irish Brothers. After all, even the detective sympathized with them, regardless of what he actually would have or should have done.
So when we see someone say "Well dur-HUK I don't think the Boondock Saints should go around shooting people dur-HUK" the audience IMMEDIATELY says "Well of course they should! What the fuck movie were YOU watching, dumbass?!"

What's wrong with this picture?

I'll tell you what's wrong with this picture.

The fact that the movie has made an opinion for you. It precludes any notion that the Irish Brothers were wrong, and makes up your mind long before the possibility of doubt is expressed. There is no freedom of choice in Boondock Saints; instead, the audience is blatantly told that our legal system is ineffective and the only way justice should be served is through the barrel of a gun.

That's called Fascism.

There's a reason it seems like an 'empowering' movie: it shows an effective method of enforcing an ideal, and anybody with a gun can do it. The issue comes when the people with the gun don't have the same ideals as you. For instance, what happens if a judge says that they're screwing over due process? Are they going to kill him, too?

The end of the movie says that doesn't matter, because the Irish Brothers are right and they took matters into their own hands against a clearly evil mafia. Anybody who says otherwise is wrong. After all, even the detective--a representative of the law--says the Irish Brothers are right.