A Cult of One

Before I got a Sirius radio, I used to listen to sports-talk a lot during my drive home. It was a choice of that, politics, or pop music that even I find unbearable. I grew tired of the institutional egomania of the Mike & the Mad Dog show, so I tended to listen to its alternative, the slightly less egomaniacal Michael Kay show on ESPNradio’s local NYC feed. Nowadays, I listen to Howard Stern replays, First Wave, the Big 80s, the Chill, Area 33, Classic Vinyl and, infrequently, ESPNradio’s national show.

In addition to the rampaging egomania, another thing that turned me off about these shows is the segments devoted to subjects other than sports. See, the funny thing about me is, when I tune into a station called ESPNradio, I actually expect to hear people talking about sports, not about how surprising last night’s episode of The Sopranos was, what the best John Wayne film is, or why the remake of Sabrina was better than the original. (Note: I have heard all three of these subjects discussed on “sports radio” shows.)

A few weeks ago, I clicked over to ESPN’s “The SportsBash” (a name that’s always made me uncomfortable. I mean, is it a party about sports? Is it about beating up sports?) during my evening commute. The host was talking about “cult classic” movies and, for some reason, I stuck with it. I guess I was hoping that he’d tell the audience about the transformative impact of Wax, or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees. Alas, what passed for “cult” movies was fare like Old School.

I was about to change stations, when the host said (paraphrasing), “I consider myself a little knowledgeable about cult movies, but I have to say, I’ve gotten about a dozen e-mails now telling me to see a movie called ‘Boondock Saints,’ and I gotta tell you, I’ve never heard of that one!”

The title was vaguely familiar, but I’d never seen it. I looked it up on Netflix when I got home:

Twin brothers Conner (Sean Patrick Flanery) and Murphy (Norman Reedus), feeling that their God-given mission is to cleanse the Earth of all human evil, set out to rid Boston of crime. But instead of joining the police force, these Irish Americans decide to kick criminal butt their own way — a la Charles Bronson. Willem Dafoe is the openly gay FBI special agent assigned to investigate.

We put the movie at the top of our queue, and watched it Saturday night. Amy asked, “Is it particularly important that Dafoe’s character is ‘openly gay’?” I told her that I didn’t know. Then he made his first appearance, at a crime scene. At that point he eyed one of the local cops for an instant, then put his headphones on, turned on his portable CD player — this was 1999, pre-iPod — and listened to opera while investigating the scene.

“Yeah,” I said, “I’m gonna guess that it’s kinda important that his character be out.”

His character goes on to engage in some pretty erratic behavior, as he begins to piece together the identities of the people who are knocking off Russian and Italian mobsters all around Boston. Dafoe’s crisis of conscience culminates in him showing up in a climactic scene in drag, the gratuitousness of which would be funny if he didn’t actually look halfway decent as a woman. It’s amazing what rouge, false eyelashes and a wig can do for a guy.

Sure, there are a couple of outlandish plot elements, and a lot of subtly gay moments of the twin brothers being all shirtless and pretty, but we also get Billy Connolly doing his Jean Reno / killing machine impression, Ron Jeremy as a mobster, and a closing-credit attempt at social commentary that’s unintentionally funny.

Which is to say, I’d recommend catching this flick (even though some of the cuts and transitions make little sense). It’s an entertaining post-Tarantino crime flick, in its over-the-top-itude.

So sports-radio shows can be good for something.

(Bonus trivia: the “ugly brother” knocked up Helena Christensen!)