Writer and director Troy Duffy obviously set out to make The Boondock Saints a "cult" movie and to find a niche market audience that would champion it. Every thematic and cinematic attribute you associate with contemporary, "hip", independent film making is duly trotted out and used in an arbitrary fashion. The Boondock Saints is violent (in that very stylised Tarantino sense of the word), slick, contrived and deliberately controversial. It also perpetuates every possible cliché about the Irish as a race and the Roman Catholic church that you can think of. Yet despite these facts, there is still the germ of a good film at its core. Vigilanteism has always been an intriguing and emotive subject that can make for challenging cinema. Populist content such as this can also be the key to box office success.