The Boondock Saints is pure unadulterated Gun Porn.  It has minimal plot, marginal character development, but lots and lots of guns, most of the time in slow motion. As gun porn, you would expect a number of things, bodies flopping around like breasts on Baywatch, spent cartridges ejaculating everywhere and The Money Shot.  In Boondock Saints this is fairly easy to spot.  Il Duce, sporting enough guns to supply the cast of the Matrix, up against the McManus twins and Rocco.  Chaos, gunfire and the removal of appendages follows in some glorious tribute to western faceoffs.

While plot is normally a hinderance in a dodgy movie, some plot is required.  There seems to be plot at the beginning, then a large stretch of plotless wasteland while they get the gunfights out the way, and then some plot at the end to try and fool you into thinking it was there all along.  This is successful the first time you watch, but the second time, you start asking questions.  How did they know the Russian Mobsters would be in the hotel room?  How did Il Duce find them? And why were there not more gunfights?

Based on the sheer volume of gunfire, Boondock Saints would qualify for 3 Stay Puft Marshmallow Men.  Add in Willem Dafoe as a gay-hating homosexual detective, and you bump it up to five.  Convince Willem Dafoe to dress in drag and it gets full marks, 5 Stay Puft Marshmallow Men of dodginess.  Of course, just because they managed to convince Dafoe to dress in drag doesn’t mean he should.  I suspect the wardrobe brief was to make sure he was the ugliest transvestite in cinema history, and they succeeded admirably.

My big criticism of this film is the slow motion.  I don’t think I always had a problem with it, but since 300 my tolerance for the use of slow motion has declined dramatically.  In fact, I didn’t realise just how much my tolerance had declined. Fortunately the use of slow motion was minimal when compared to the atrocities inflicted on film by Zack Snyder and so, I can give Boondock Saints a respectable 4 mutant smileys out of 5.

While I suspect that the Willem Dafoe line, “Television. Television is the explanation for this – you see this in bad television. Little assault guys creeping through the vents, coming in through the ceiling – that James Bond shit never happens in real life! Professionals don’t do that!” is probably my favourite in the movie, it isn’t really snappy enough to warrant the most memorable quotation award.  The snappy line “We could kill Everyone” is the one that surfaces when I think back to the film.  Not only is it short and sweet, but it’s an accurate summary of the plot.

Fortunately, gun porn is something you can admit to liking in public and the worst you’ll get is people rolling their eyes at you.  And occasionally, you can find someone with which to discuss which is the best gun porn, The Matrix, Equilibrium or Boondock Saints.  Of course, if you’re reading this, you already have an opinion and you;ve found a safe place to air it, so let us know in the comments.