Two Catholic brothers, Conner and Murphy MacManus, feel the need to kill mobsters and bad guys in Boston after taking care of a Russian mobster. Meanwhile, an FBI agent, Paul Smecker, is tracking them down. He doesn’t know the guys who are causing this, but the more he investigates these murders, the more he likes these mysteries men.
Blaine: Troy Duffy wanted to make a movie that you could laugh at, have a good time, have cool gun fights, be artistic, have religion and have unique dialog. It only took 32 days to shoot “Boondock Saints". Troy Duffy needed two guys who looked similar to each other in order to pass as brothers and he was lucky to find Norman Reeds (The Walking Dead) and Sean Patrick Stewart. South Boston is a Catholic community. There were a lot of off the boat Irish people there who come from remote rural ares, know as the Boondocks. Troy wanted the Saint to be like them.
David Della Rocco, who plays the brothers’ good friend, Rocco, was a good friend of director Troy Duffy and his brother back when they worked at a bar. Troy liked David's personality that when he was writing the script he wrote a part for him in it. David was willing to give up acting because it wasn’t working out for him, but Troy convinced him to be apart of this project. What Troy likes about David is that he is a natural guy and a little over the top at times.
Troy met with Williem Dafoe for dinner to talk about the project and Williem grew a huge interest in being apart of it. Shortly after that Williem was in. Troy wanted Williem Dafoe’s character, Agent Paul Smacker, to be apart of the Boston Police Department and act like he’s the kind of guy who says I’m smarter than everyone else and go get me a cup of coffee while I do my job when you first meet him. Paul is also gay, but he still acts like the tuff guy. Troy just thought it was a good idea for Paul to be this guy who’s homosexuality is a non issue and be more worshiped as the investigator that he is by the police officers. A friend of Troy’s, who is gay, saw the film and thanked Troy for creating a gay character that was strong and confident. I like it when Paul is freaking out of his mind when he is saying “There was a fire fight!” during the scene where he is describing the crime scene that happened in the neighborhood.
Billy Connolly told Troy that he wanted to play a bad ass character because he had never played one before and lucky thing for Billy, Troy created this character in the script who carries six guns with him. Billy was so excited for this part after Troy discussed the wardrobe and the guns he would be using. They would shoot this sequence in a neighborhood where Billy’s character is shooting at the MacManus brothers and Rocco. Off camera, Billy would talk to the people of the neighborhood and make them laugh with these jokes he was telling them. Billy’s character doesn’t have a name. Troy said that Billy’s character is the MacManus brothers’ father they’ve never known until towards the end when the boys say a prayer for Rocco after he has be killed. Billy had trouble remembering his line for that scene. He even practiced it in the mirror several times and still had trouble remembering it.
Troy was having trouble figuring out how to come up with an idea for how Conner could escape after being handcuffed to the toilet. His brother suggested that Conner would pull the toilet out from the ground in order for him to escape. After Conner escapes, he then goes on the roof of the building while holding the toilet, drops it so it’ll hit the Russian mobster and then jumps so he can hit the other guy who is working for the Russian. Troy had that sequence shot in slow motion and he almost got fired because the production company didn’t like that. They couldn’t understand why it was in slow motion so Troy had that scene edited together quickly and had techno music used for the background. They liked it after Troy showed them how it was going to look.
Troy is not a cat person. He was in a relationship with a woman once and she had four cats which drove him nuts. Troy wrote a scene in the movie where Rocco accidentally kills his girlfriend’s cat by slamming his fists on the table where the gun is. That scene shows Troy’s personal frustration for cats. It’s funny because it’s so unexpected and it’s also funny seeing the boys reactions and Murphy is saying “I can’t believe that just fucking happened!” Rocco asks if it’s dead when clearly it is splattered all over the wall LOL.
My rating on “The Boondock Saints” is fie out of five stars.
