The slo-mo saturated murderous-vigilante film The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day is the long-awaited follow-up to the cult-favorite original, released in 1999. The first film was panned for its cheap Guy-Ritchie-playing-Tarantino gimmicks, yet managed to earn a post-theatrical legion of devotees who didn't want to completely commit to the mob flicks and had tired of Scarface. The second, sadly, is a step down, and won't be remembered nearly as fondly.

The Boondock sequel follows the familiar path of vengeance as the Irish McManus brothers (played by Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus) seek revenge on Boston mob forces over the murder of a priest that was done to look like their work. It's been a decade since the boys retreated to the remote Irish coastline with their father, aka Il Duce, but their return to the ass-kicking ways of old apparently took as long as a haircut and shave.

This time the brothers are pursued by a cocky Southern belle-turned FBI agent (Julie Benz), replacing Willem Dafoe's way-over-the-top detective from the first movie. They pick up a third Saint on their way to the mainland: Romeo (Clifton Collins Jr.), a wily and over-emotional Hispanic hooked into the Mexican mob. His attempt to be the comic foil flounder horribly, but that's just the beginning of the issues with this film.

Chock full of self-appointed rightings of wrongs, the film is an exercise of style over substance with only fleeting flares of operatic drama - courtesy of Billy Connolly. The plot is so convoluted and full of unnecessary layers that it gets outright confusing. Dafoe's absence from the majority of the film is a powerful distraction, given that Benz's character does little to replace the balance between the shot-caller (her) and the henchmen (the three bumbling, piss-poor actors posing as cops). At least Dafoe was captivating. Benz is just eye candy.

Judd Nelson as the panic-room-loving mob boss is utterly ridiculous, as is the dream segment where the McManus' meet their dead friend, done cheap and tacky. The dialogue is flat and the action scenes are so over the top that the film drowns itself in impossibility. Even notoriously hackish writer/director Troy Duffy admitted, "We definitely poured on the cheese factor sometimes with the story, and frankly a lot of the characters, we pushed that humor a little bit farther than we did last time."

The ending is as strong a sequel lead-in as the first was, but the well has already run dry. Don't waste your time on this one, folks. 

CraveOnline's Rating: 6 out of 10