Guest Critic Adam Perry reviews Richard Kelly and Troy Duffy's latest films.
Recently I had reason to take in The Box at the movies. Coming from Richard “Donnie Darko” Kelly, I had little reason for excitement resume-wise. However, I cannot help but be interested in Kelly after watching the #1 Donnie Darko Fan: A Darkomentary short film DVD extra, in which a crazed, possibly fake fan explains on camera why he is the number one Donnie Darko fan. The fan eventually goes to a convention where Kelly is speaking, and asks him numerous mythology related questions about Donnie Darko. Kelly, a good-natured, jockish looking guy, responds, “I made it all up, man. I made it all up.” This answer intrigued me, as did the downward spiral of the fan in the video, and ever since his name has caught my eye, always made me read an article about his upcoming projects. So I saw The Box, my first Richard Kelly theatrical experience.
The story of The Box is simple, but it is also crowded with details. A struggling family receives a box and a key. The key opens up to a “button unit,” as Frank Langella says, and the button, when pressed, signals for the killing of an unknown individual. The family is then compensated with one million dollars cash. In 1976!
Kelly seems to have a fascination with disfigurement in this film; Cameron Diaz has only one toe as the result of botched x-ray radiation, and anyone who knows anything about this film has seen Frank “half his face was…gone” Langella in the ads. The make-up department gets points for it being slightly more realistic, and far more frightening, than Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight, but Kelly never really uses this idea for anything other than shock value.
The button is pushed, and calamity ensues. Herein lie the film's best moments, with evil Langella unleashing a torrent of unknown menaces in the form of everyday people from earlier in the film, all of whom are under his complete control and suffer bloody noses for it. It is here also where Kelly throws in many plotlines, including alien invasions and the nefarious nature of government testing. The Mars theme is eerily reminiscent of Black Bush’s, and real Bush’s, Mars follies, if I may get my Peter Travers on for a moment. The alien bit, I will give Kelly credit, is done fairly well, and gets points for originality, if anything, aping a tad bit from Sphere.
However, bad acting and lame dialogue makes the movie semi-unwatchable. Cameron Diaz has a wretched southern accent, but does not give a terrible performance. James Marsden and whoever plays the couple’s son are both terrible. Frank Langella is, of course, amazingly hilarious as Arlington “more like 1/8 of a face” Steward. I would, of course, prefer to abstain from giving the film a grade; I guess it would be [B-]
And now The Boondock Saints, being viewed in its entirety for the first time since I was a high school freshman. First time ever on DVD format.
The film opens with the theme of Smoking and Irish Stuff, including religious imagery, the font of the credits, and the music. One of my Irish friends, who is an outspoken hater of movies that are “too Irish,” which for him include Mystic River, said he thought The Boondock Saints was “a complete Tarantino rip-off” and that he “thinks so much less of [me] because [I] like those movies.”
Troy Duffy, despite his faults, does bring an amount of personal flair to this “Tarantino rip-off.” Great musical numbers, particularly the introduction of Willem Dafoe, original and humorous action set pieces, and likeable characters distract the non-anal, i.e. average viewer from the films otherwise present Tarantino biting. Also, some will disparage the time-shuffling of the script, also crediting that to Tarantino, I’ve always found the way Duffy fools with time to be like a Guillermo Arriaga script. Funny enough that The Boondock Saints came out before any of Arriaga’s big scripts, which may make the comparison fail, but that says something about the nature of comparing a work to a work, and labeling something as a rip-off. No one is original anymore; it’s the way ideas are applied that make a film like this one worthy of many a repeat viewing.
Despite myself I enjoy this film. It has the gritty, late ‘90s shoe-string budget feel of such other Dafoe classics like Animal Factory. There are diverting scenes, full of as much spectacle as any scumbucket-worthy action fair such as T-formers II or G.I. Joe. Throughout the film we get four action pieces, each recalled upon after the fact. A fight at a bar, an improbable case of self-defense, a large shoot-up of a Russian gang meeting, and a three on one gunfight that involves at least twelve firearms. The ending is a toss-up; the eventual alliance of the McManus brothers and Agent Smecker is interesting, mostly because Duffy is so clear about Smecker’s guilt over allying himself with such blatant, justice-dispensing killers, but the way events play out is a little on the weak, unbelievable side.
After re-watching The Boondock Saints, it was on to see Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day. The general public had been teased/threatened upon the general public for at least six years before a trailer and a release date were finally set, an interim during which Duffy was smeared/exposed as a megalomaniac, friend-alienating jerk in the film “Overnight,” and everyone except Norman Reedus aged noticeably. The film opens with Rocco, killed off in the first film, walking into a church, giving a monologue about being involved with the Saints. A priest is then murdered in the Saints’ style, in an effort to flush the McManus brothers out of hiding.
The hiding turns out to be Ireland, where the brothers have spent ten years growing their hair and beards and herding goats with their improbable father, Noah “Il Duce” McManus. Upon learning of the priest’s demise, the brother shave, cut hairs, and dig up the past in the form of a suitcase full of weapons, cash, and pennies. Boarding a freighter, they return to Boston, picking up Clifton “Gonzales Gonzales” Colins Jr. as a sidekick. When the Saints land in Boston, they uncover a multi-layered plan to flush them out, by Papa Joe Yakavetta’s son, Judd Nelson, who was in turn being used to lure Noah McManus out of hiding, so an old enemy can confront him. Extreme violence, time-shuffling, and unexpected cameos follow.
All Saints Day is truly a fan’s sequel. Duffy deftly recalls bits from his first film, like the brothers’ hilarious fight in a heating duct, without repeating them. The movie’s sweet spot for me was a fever dream that the McManus brothers have, in which Rocco expounds upon his death, saying, “I wouldn’t trade the good we did for the whole world…not a single minute of it.” Whether or not the viewer agrees with the film’s rampant vigilantism, it is hard not to identify with the themes of doing something with your life, even if your life ends up being the cost. Despite the films cartoonish nature, deaths sting and big ideas can blindside the viewer, while most serious films cannot even hope to evoke such feelings.
Duffy’s flair for violence is admirable, and the way his victims are shot echoes such films as The Wild Bunch, in the large scope of massacres that take place. His victims always die funny, being shot four or five times before the actor realizes that they are supposed to fall. Critics will deride his violence as unrealistic; I didn’t know we were watching Saving Private Ryan or A History of Violence here. The Saints are a cartoon unto themselves, their world is a fully realized one, and the sequel was made with that world and its fan base, all created with the first film, in mind. For entertainment value, southern Julie Benz, and crazily orchestrated scenes of carnage, look no further than the Saints, I and II. [A]. - Adam Perry.
