Obnoxious to an extreme, viewing The Boondock Saints is like spending two hours in the company of a drunken Irish KKK Grand Wizard high off his first viewing of Pulp Fiction. It’s well documented that Troy Duffy is a belligerent, ungrateful bastard, and the screenplay is populated by characters who share his worldview and potty mouth. That there are no non-white characters is hardly a surprise, but Willem Dafoe’s travesty of a performance will blindside anyone expecting the depths displayed in the equally ham-handed Platoon. Billy Connolly is also wasted as a near-mute gunman, proving that while he may be one of the most brilliant comics to walk the Earth, his agent deserves to be thrown into a wood-chipper.

An analysis of the plot would only bore you to tears, so we’ll just go straight to Act 3 where our two dashing Mick psychopaths have now garnered a religious following of sorts, blowing away criminals like Bronson in Death Wish. Even gay FBI agent Dafoe is on their side, showing up in drag to provide a particularly nauseating deus-ex when he disregards protocol to shoot it out with the Mafia morons. This is not nearly as offensive as the asinine coda where Connolly teams up with the Micks to execute a defendant in a trial. The screenplay stacks the deck to make sure he’s unrepentantly guilty (natch), to a degree that makes Death Wish 3 look like restrained social commentary.

There is not a single memorable line, memorable kill, or memorable instance of direction, just a relentless flood of F-bombs, Catholic fetishism, and inept gunplay. If The Boondock Saints has an upside, I now use it as a litmus test to gauge movie taste. Guess how I feel about anyone who regards this as even remotely decent?