The Boondock Saints

THE BOONDOCK SAINTS begins well, then descends into drudgery.

Here's the premise: a pair of affable Irish-American twins gets in hot water with Boston's Russian mafia. Rather than sit around and wait to be killed, they go on the offensive. Much gunplay ensues.

My problem with the film can be summed up in the arc of a character played by Willem Dafoe. The character, an FBI agent, starts out smart and funny. He's several steps ahead of the hapless Boston PD, but not so brilliant that he can't be surprised. He's quirky, but he's believable, and he adds to the film. As the movie progresses, however, Dafoe's character becomes weirder and weirder, behaving so oddly at one crime scene that he yanked me right out of my state of suspended disbelief. Eventually, his character just became ridiculous, no longer fun to watch.

And so it is with THE BOONDOCK SAINTS. What begins as a funny, inventive take on the vigilante genre concludes as a workmanlike, blood-for-blood's sake, exercise in implausibility. Don't believe the hype.