Reception
The film received generally negative reviews from critics; critics polled on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a score of 17% "Rotten", with the site's consensus called the film, "A juvenile, ugly movie that represents the worst tendencies of directors channeling Tarantino." However, users gave the film a score of 93. Nathan Rabin of The A.V. Club described the film, in his review of the DVD, as "less a proper action-thriller" than "a series of gratuitously violent setpieces strung together with only the sketchiest semblance of a plot". Rabin went on to describe the film as "all style and no substance, a film so gleeful in its endorsement of vigilante justice that it almost veers (or ascends) into self-parody." Robert Koehler of Variety described the film in his review as "A belated entry in the hipster crime movie movement that began with Reservoir Dogs, Troy Duffy's "Boondock Saints" mixes blood and Catholic-tinged vigilante justice in excessive portions for sometimes wacky and always brutal effect. more interested in finding fresh ways to stage execution scenes than in finding meaning behind the human urge for self-appointed righting of wrongs."
Koehler also described Flanery and Reedus as "curiously stolid and blank", while praising supporting actors Connolly, Dafoe, and Rota for making the most of their screen time. Koehler also praised the tech personnel, "This uneven exercise in pacing and cutting is abetted by an eclectic score by Jeff Danna and whiz lensing by Adam Kane. Other tech credits fire bull's-eyes."
Film critics have taken note of the film's extreme violence and "slow-motion bloodletting".
In its original 5-theater run, the film only earned $30,471. It later developed a cult following and has grossed about $50 million in domestic video sales.
Read more about this topic: The Boondock Saints
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)