Willem Dafoe makes this movie–without him, the narrative framing wouldn’t work and his over the top failings in The Last Temptation of Christ actually works in this film. Even considering Dafoe’s performance, The Boondock Saints has many first time director failings-overly indulgent story (techno music in one scene just didn’t work), Rocco doesn’t really fit, brothers aren’t given any real personality other than affable, multilingual, Irish fraternal twins with a genetic predisposition for vigilantism–in other words, one dimensional, the clever narrative framing gets dull after repeated once too often and cat killing was gratuitous (& I did NOT critique cat killing in US’ The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo so no pro-cat bias here). If you have Billy Connolly in a movie, I think that it would be wiser to introduce him sooner than later. There was a whole section in the middle of the movie where I thought, “What just happened?” If you think this movie is amazing, please post a comment because I am willing to concede that I may not get it. Ambitious, promising, but falls short. Not recommended & too violent.