Everything I love turns to shit. It’s like the world loves playing these sick little filmic jokes on me. “Oh, Graham, you liked this? You thought it was a good movie? Well guess what, we just got Nicolas Cage to do the remake. And he’s bringing his worried face.” Nicolas Cage is the worst. But they did it with Rambo, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and now the fat greasy suits pumping Scorsese’s brain are threatening to remake Taxi Driver.

I loved the first Boondock Saints. It came out of nowhere, a cheap Tarantino knockoff with everything that’s right in the world of action film: guns, mafias, vengeance and a superhuman race of badass drunks commonly known as the Irish. It was a playful, gratuitous take on a tired genre that didn’t care how absurd it was and ended up turning into a cult classic even after being panned and bombing at the box office.

During the interim 10 years, returning director Troy Duffy thought long and hard about how he would do a sequel. What he would change, how the characters would have grown, what had happened during their hiatus … in the end, however, he decided on the wildest and most innovative continuation available: do nothing differently. I hate you, Troy Duffy.

The grievous overacting of Duffy’s charges, the MacManus brothers (Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus) returns to the screen with bloody enthusiasm, silenced pistols in hand. This time around, the film follows the two on a revenge trip from Ireland to their native Boston, where a copycat killer has baited them into coming back by rocking their priest in the face. Accompanied once again by their wild-haired Papa (Billy Connolly), the Saints penetrate the various orifices of mobsters and baddies in their quest for vengeance. The sequel loses Willem Dafoe (devastating) in favor of Julie Benz, who should have stuck to being kinda hot on Dexter instead of letting her high heels and stupidity get in the way of all the Boondock blood.

There’s plenty of it. I mean, at least Duffy’s straight up with us. He doesn’t waste a lot of time complicating things with character development or motivation, opting for plenty of vicious gunfights, mobsters puking their mobster lines all over the screen and slow motion shootouts circa 1997. In fact, it’s the same goddamn movie. Duffy is ruining his own classic — and himself by association, I don’t even know how that’s possible — for what will probably end up buying him four lotto tickets and a two minute lap dance at Melonshakers, pants on hands off.

All Saints Day will appease the cult following that made it possible. Chances are, if you liked the first, this’ll do the trick. Many fans have already touted the sequel as better than the original. This, sadly, can only be attributed to the fact that Duffy had more money and better effects to create the same movie. The only problem with the fatter budget and higher expectations is that they get in the way of Duffy’s directorial saving grace, the fact that he doesn’t take himself seriously, shamelessly throwing in gems like “Let’s do some gratuitous violence” and “This ain’t rocket surgery.” The goofy amateurism we saw in the first film would really have come in handy during the second film’s more homophobic and racist moments. But hey, potato tomato.

Fortunately, all this is completely beside the point. Remember, at first glance, the original sucked too. A cult classic ages with time. You have to let enough people hate it to let a disgusting pile of shit like Boondock Saints II mature and become another chapter in the cinematic book of bloody glory. This was a film made for the fans, not the critics, so there’s no reason to pretend otherwise. Halfway through the film, you accept the fact that the dialogue and acting aren’t going to improve and the painfully heavy-handed direction ain’t goin’ nowhere. At that point you can begin to appreciate its hokey appeal, absurdity and gratuitous violence. So I guess Boondock Saints II has all the right ingredients to garner another cult following. The sequel acts as a sequel should. It makes a bunch of awkward “jokes” related to the first movie to appease fanboys and leaves a gaping hole that can only be filled with — could it be? — a third film. It’s a fun movie. Not art, not melodrama, just bloody, goofy fun. Take your parents.