Is anyone even noticing how well this movie is written, paced and acted?

First of all, I want to point that I'm looking for a productive discussion here, especially with people who didn't enjoy this movie. I don't just want to praise it because I personally love it but rather want to understand the extreme negativity that is often pointed towards it. Even some fans refer to it as being a guilty pleasure which I can simply not understand at all. A guilty pleasure means, at least to me, that I enjoy something although or exactly because it is bad. Schumacher's Batman movies are a personal example for that. I like watching them occasinally just because of their weird colorfulness and plain stupidity. But watching The Boondock Saints is stated as a similar experience? How? It's a good comedy and that's why I have to laugh a lot about it but that's something completely different than enjoying a guilty pleasure for its failure.

I've just watched this movie tonight for about the 6th or 7th time since it came out in '99 and every time I see it again I'm simply astonished by the level of competence that you can notice in pretty much every aspect of it. This film was written and directed by a barkeeper but it doesn't feel amateurish in the slightest way. A lot of people are totally bashing this movie for reasons I can hardly understand and that's why I opened this thread. Even if you personally don't like the movie, can you really not see how well it is made? For example, I personally never cared for Kubrick's The Shining although I could hardly imagine anything that I would critize about it. It just doesn't appael to me. I'm not a big horror fan, I often don't really like movies with a very limited location and cast etc. I have purely pesonal problems with it but I would never ever call it a weak film in any way, because I can clearly see what people love so much about it. But I can't recall having ever read something similar about The Boondock Saints. Whenever it's critized, it's being bashed or simply being called "stupid crap for teenagers".

Let me illustrate a couple of aspects of the film that really stand out to me as being great or even unique. I'm not claiming that these are objectively great or anything like that but I do have some problems imagining that others could not even at least acknowldge a certain amount of quality here.

First of all, there is Willem Dafoe's character, Paul Smecker, and his performance. In all of his great portrayels, I have never seen better work by him - and he is pretty much always a world class actor. The character has so many small details that enrich it. For instance, he is the only one who has no problem with letting his body get touched by the victim's blood. Sometimes he goes through his hair with his bloody gloves as he is so into his detective work, while the other cops look at him bewilderedly. And there are all these little gay mannerisms that he shows throughout the film. He never goes over the top with it, which would make it annoying, but you can see some of his "gay touch" in almost every scene. The geratest thing about that is that the charatcer itself seems to be aware of his gay gestures and actively plays with them. It's just outstanding acting with the whole body. Furthermore, Smeckers thing with listening to classical music while at crime scenes, to fully delve in the location, is perfectly developed troughout the story. In the beginning, he uses it to focus his mind, to not get distracted by anything. But the more he becomes emotionally invested in these seemingly incromphensible murders, he loses his ability to be the calm "super-detective" as which he is (stylishly over the top) introduced. In the shoot-out climax, his character's delving into the crime scene is culminated. He can no longer use the music to focus but rather gets directed by it (although he doesn't listen to music within the film, the connection to the extra-diegetic music can clearly be made). Smecker manically conducting the music while even being physically present in his own narration of what has supposedly happened is not just a cool image, it's a turning point for the character in the story. That's why this moment is captured so extremely and iconicly and has a big impact on the viewer.

That was just one example of many things that I simply admire about this movie. I don't want to get into that much detail with other aspects but I do want to at least mention a few others. For example, the great pacing of the film. There is never any stretch of relatively uninetersting events happening. A movie like Tarantino's Jackie Brown, for instance, has long stretches of pretty much nothing important happening. While being a big Tarantino fan, I often find myself rather disinterested in this very slow paced and unspectacular movie that is Jackie Brown (I know that many people will not agree with me here). On the contrary, pretty much every scene in Boondock Saints is interesting as they all add something to the plot or the characters. I also love the humor of the film. That is of course even more dependent on personal taste than other aspects but, for example, the way the characters interact with each other is so well written and timed comedy. How Rocko is treated by its organisation (especially the joke scene), the dynamics and squabbling between him and the twins, I just love it. I don't think I ever liked a dumb gangster that treats his girlfriend like *beep* more than Rocko. He's the perfect blend of being equally comical and likeable, just as famous other characters like Frank Drebin or The Dude. The same is true with the dynamics between Smecker and the cops. The FBI guy teaching the local cops how their work is really done while sending the most incompetent one to get the coffee and bagels. That's just well excecuted comedy. And then, of course, there is the incredible audiovisual quality of the film. The music, the camerawork, the slow-mos, all this creates so many unforgetable images.

So in all these things I mentioned - and I could go on for quite a bit longer - is there really no quality filmmaking to be recognized? I don't find it fair that The Boondock Saints is largely perceived as this weird, rather stupid cult movie with a doubtful message, that only male teens might enjoy for its onesidedness and over the top coolness. No, it's so much more than "only" a cult movie. Just as The Big Lebowski, it's a really, really well acted, written and directed comedy that I will enjoy my whole lifetime. I've been loving it for more than 15 years now and it never gets old for me in the slightest way on every rewatch. At least in this way it is a real cult movie though I guess.