Troy Duffy
16 connections found
Filmography
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Electra Glide in Blue (1973)
Directed by James William Guercio
influenced The Boondock Saints (1999)
Not since James William Guercio on Electra Glide in Blue (1973) has a supposed wunderkind disappeared so quickly.
This is far from an original concept (ever heard of Natural Born Killers?), but the idea is at least intriguing.
Roth delivers the exact Hostel -squeamish Death Wish his historical career promised – which, in large part, is also the issue given how Death Wish somehow boasts less subtlety than Troy Duffy’s The Boondock Saints .
Duffy, fuelled by the same urban dismay that led Paul Schrader and Andrew Kevin Walker to pen the vigilante fantasies Taxi Driver and Seven , respectively, hammered out a screenplay about two Boston brothers who take revenge on the local Mafiosi, which sold on spec to Miramax for $450,000.
Worse, Duffy suggests some Brundlefly splice of Tarantino and another key influence on Sundance-era filmmakers, Edward Burns: The Boondock Saints is like a head-on collision between Pulp Fiction and The Brothers McMullen , making the film the perfect all-purpose bookend for the independent cinema of the nineteen-nineties.
"The Boondock Saints," " Reindeer Games ," " Phoenix ," "Truth or Consequences, New Mexico," " Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead ," "2 Days in the Valley," "American Strays," " The Way of the Gun ," "Suicide Kings," "8 Heads in a Duffel Bag"—I could go on, but then we'd be here all day, and I'd never get around to talking about Ben Wheatley's "Free Fire," a Tarantinoid film that arrives just in time to mark the 25th anniversary of "Reservoir Dogs," which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival back in 1992.
But if the film has only one note to play, it plays it with a certain slapstick panache, landing closer to Reservoir Dogs than The Boondock Saints on the quality spectrum of movies about loquacious lowlifes with itchy trigger fingers.
The Max Fischer Players came to mind more than once, as did The Boondock Saints , along with every other crummy genre exercise that made me stop renting movies with pistols prominently featured on the video box during the Clinton administration.
Worse, Duffy suggests some Brundlefly splice of Tarantino and another key influence on Sundance-era filmmakers, Edward Burns: The Boondock Saints is like a head-on collision between Pulp Fiction and The Brothers McMullen , making the film the perfect all-purpose bookend for the independent cinema of the nineteen-nineties.
Despite being his first screenplay, both studios were convinced The Boondock Saints was going to be the next Pulp Fiction, and writer-director Duffy the next Quentin Tarantino.
Films like Smokin’ Aces , The Boondock Saints , and Lucky Number Slevin were chaotic crime actioners that are seen as Tarantino/Ritchie-lite and suffered from negative critical reviews but gained cult followings.
Army of Thieves (2021)
Directed by Matthias Schweighöfer
influenced by The Boondock Saints (1999)
Themes
“The Boondock Saints” kept popping into my head while watching Schweighöfer’s film.
Occasionally those movies were all kinds of ridiculous, over-the-top fun, like The Boondock Saints .
“Lock, Stock” — and compatriots like “The Boondock Saints” — probably don’t even merit space on college freshman dorm room walls any more.
Alas, this ends up more “The Linguini Incident” meets “The Boondock Saints,” an imitation of wan imitations.
"Reservoir Dogs" created a sub-genre of crime suspense copycats, of which Troy Duffy's "The Boondock Saints" (1999) is one of the most embarrassing examples.
But what we are left with could be described as Reservoir Dogs -lite.
But all’s good because it truly — and arguably even moreso than the last, still ridiculous two entries — never lets up, never lets the laws of the universe dictate events and, most importantly, never performs its shall we say unlikely acts with the lame timing and staging of, say, “The Boondock Saints”’ face-palmy toilet building jump.
Basically Duffy takes the screenplay for “The Blues Brothers” and works it to fit his action fixation while enlisting about every goofy one-liners and plot device you can actually imagine (Duffy obviously made one character a Tourette’s sufferer to squeeze in extra foul language).
Sergio Di Zio ("The Boondock Saints," "Cinderella Man"), a young David Paymer lookalike, is also incredibly sympathetic as 'Deputy Donut,' the naive small town cop who checks up on Chris (although Frank's final placement of the character is akin to shooting puppies in a barrel) and Greg Dunham, a shadowy Sam Shepard double, is evil personified as the black clad henchman Bone.