As a movie, The Boondock Saints is an ugly and witless pastiche; as a case study in how home video (including unusually active participation and promotion by Blockbuster) once had the power to help a film find an audience, it’s endlessly compelling.
— Adam Nayman (The Ringer)
The film quickly became a cult classic among a particular kind of American guy, often an adolescent but adult men fit the mold as well, who consciously or subconsciously wished, in a world of post-9/11 paranoia slowly coming into focus, to have his hand at control. Duffy was allegedly inspired to make the movie after witnessing a drug dealer take a couple of dollars off of a corpse in his apartment building, and it makes sense his ego and abusive low-inhibition nature would lead him to turn it into a reactionary manifesto film. [This] kind of movie is crack to the average American teenager who fantasizes about exerting power but doesn’t want to look like the bad guy doing it, so he drags a fraudulent sense of moralizing into the fantasy.
— Soham Gadre (Paste Magazine)
Synopsis: Tired of the crime overrunning the streets of Boston, Irish Catholic twin brothers Conner and Murphy are inspired by their faith to cleanse their hometown of evil with their own brand of zealous vigilante justice. As they hunt down and kill one notorious gangster after another, they become controversial folk heroes in the community. But Paul Smecker, an eccentric FBI agent, is fast closing in on their blood-soaked trail.