I will start this off by saying that there truly can’t be many people more worthy of loathing than the subject of this film, Troy Duffy, the chain-smoking, hard-drinking pseudo-tough guy director of the film The Boondock Saints. This film chronicles his meteoric rise to fame after his script for The Boondock Saints was picked up by then Miramax chief and Hollywood heavyweight Harvey Weinstein and his subsequent crash after he fucks it all up. This acquisition was the stuff that well…movies are made of. Not only did he sell his script, he was given directorship of the film (with cast approval and final cut), he and his band The Brood (who suck, by the way – they sound like a low rent version of any number of 90s grunge bands) will produce the soundtrack to the film, and Weinstein would also buy Duffy the bar where he was working as a bouncer, J. Sloan’s. As you can imagine, this is enough to inflate anyone’s ego. For Troy Duffy, however, his ego-inflation goes above and beyond anything I could ever imagine. This film adequately documents this.

The extensive footage really shows what a controlling, egomaniac Duffy really is. The seemingly infinite amount of times where he says “no one has ever done this in the history of film or music” or “we’ll deserve every cent we get, we’ll deserve every ounce of recognition we get” shows you how full of himself he really is. The certainty with which he speaks about how Hollywood works and the music business works and how he knows what’s really going on comes off as nothing more than overly fucking delusional. That anyone put their trust in him to make anything is totally amazing and shows how fucked and crazy making movies obviously is. If you read the script, it makes you wonder how in the world Duffy could ever become (self-described, of course) “Hollywood’s latest hard-on.” The script is weak, derivative and ultimately boring. The finished film is no better.

That Harvey Weinstein, as astute as he has been in the past, thought Duffy was a new American voice in film makes me scratch my head. The premise of the Boondock Saints is two Irish brothers sense a calling from God to clean up the crime in America and set forth with great anger, plugging every criminal they see. Nothing new to see here, folks. The acting is bad, as in really bad. David Della Rocco gives one of the absolute worst performances I’ve ever seen. Yelling only works for people like Al Pacino, boss. And if you are using Ron Jeremy for his acting ability not his sexual prowess in your movie, you know it’s bad.

You can watch the trailer here and judge for yourself:

If I had watched this when I was 13, perhaps it would sit better with me, because that’s its demographic. No substance, hardly any style, lots of guns and a high body count. You really shook up the industry, Troy. You are Michael Bay without the budget.

But The Boondock Saints was really only supposed to be the catalyst for Duffy and his band to make it big. The reason they are all out in L.A. is to make music. The band members – Jimi Jackson, Gordon Clark and Troy‘s brother Taylor – float in the periphery of Troy‘s orbit as he tries to settle everything since “maybe [he’s] got a couple of things figured out to make all this shit work.” There are countless scenes where they all sit around listening to his diatribes about how great he is, how they wouldn’t be there except for him and how his insight into the business practices of both the film and music industries far outpace those that are current. But like little puppy dogs circling an alpha male, they sit and take it.

It’s good to remind yourself while watching this film that directors Tony Montana and Mark Brian Smith were once members of Duffy‘s entourage, working as co-managers of the band and presumably hoping to leverage influence surrounding Duffy and The Boondock Saints to help them kickstart their own careers in film. So when they are berated by Duffy and other members of the band for wanting money for the work they’ve done on the band’s behalf and are denied it, one can see why they would have an axe to grind with Duffy. Whether or not this film sprung from some sort of animosity towards Duffy (who could blame them, right?) and the band or whether they were just filming and presenting events as they unfolded is up to you. They have defended the integrity of the material presented in this film as accurate. Duffy has argued otherwise. Of course he would. No one wants to be shown to be as much of a prick as he comes off as in this film.

So this film ends with the washout of Duffy. The Boondock Saints fails to make even an impression in its “theatrical” release, which was really just five theatres in maybe two cities. The film has found an extensive cult following on DVD, fresh with Aequitas and Veritas tattoos, but the best part about this is that as business and industry-savvy as Duffy thought he was, he and his agents didn’t negotiate any percentage of sales for home video/DVD. I guess he wasn’t so damn knowledgeable after all, huh?

After 10 years of BS fans moaning about a sequel, The Boondocks Saints 2: All Saints Day was released in 2009. I haven’t seen it nor will I. I can’t imagine that it’s any better than the first.

Here’s the trailer:

Overnight is a film that I have watched at least five times since its release. And as many times as I’ve watched it, I can’t help but to come back again and again because I still can’t believe what a titanic douchelapper Duffy seems to be. You really need to watch it to believe it. Perhaps he’s changed since this footage was filmed. I hope he has.

You can watch the trailer for Overnight here: