Bartender turned filmmaker Troy Duffy, the writer-director of 1999’s indie cult classic The Boondock Saints and the subject of the 2003 documentary Overnight (a cautionary tale of the arriviste’s subsequent burnout), returns to South Boston for Boondock‘s long anticipated sequel. So has Duffy learned anything new in the ten-year interim?

On the evidence of this insipid and uninspired sequel, it doesn’t seem like it. Duffy’s got a formula that had some cult success on his first movie, and he’s sticking to it, thank you very much.

Ten years ago, Duffy’s attempts to ape Quentin Tarantino’s stylized gratuitous violence, slow-mo camerawork and drawn-out character introductions probably even seemed fresh, but now it’s become a groan-inducing parody of itself — the John Woo wielding-dual-pistols shtick seeming as outdated as Tab Clear and the Sega Genesis. Indeed, this approach also extends to the casting, with brothers Connor (Sean Patrick Flanery) and Murphy (Norman Reedus), as well as the three bumbling Boston detectives (Bob Marley, Brian Mahoney, and David Ferry), reprising their roles from the original. Ten years ago you could forgive their bad acting, aware of the director’s novice status and his presumably limited resources. But now the performances are strikingly cartoonish and one-note.

For those that missed the first installment, it involved two Irish-American twin brothers, Connor and Murphy MacManus, waging a holy war on Boston’s Russian and Italian gangsters with the help of a loyal but dumb sidekick ( David Della Rocco), a gay FBI agent (Willem Dafoe), and an infamous hitman who it turned out was actually the twins’ long-lost father (Billy Connolly). At the end of the first movie, the “Saints,” as they were dubbed by some members of the Boston public, made a vow to continue their vigilante quest to bring to justice the criminals the justice system had failed to punish.

Instead, the beginning of this sequel finds the two brothers tending sheep in a farm in Ireland, having spent ten years cultivating ridiculous Jesus hair and beards. They are seemingly content with their lot, but their quiet life is rudely interrupted one stormy night by the local priest, who breathlessly barges into the little cottage they share with their father to tell them that a priest has been murdered in South Boston in their signature style — two gunshots to the back of the head and pennies on the eyes. Before the priest can even finish, the brothers are decided upon what they have to do and earnestly storm out of the cottage for an unintentionally hilarious homoerotic montage in which they cut their hair and beards, lather soap into their crucifix-tattooed naked bodies, and dig up the guns and money saved from their previous exploits for just such a moment. When the brothers return to the cottage like two preened and coiffed Irish Catholic showdogs, the priest wonders about their intentions and seems incredulous when they say the inevitable: “Kill all the motherfuckers who had anything to do wit it.” What did you think they were going to say, you crazy old fool? “Thank you for telling us, father, but just look at our long beards and hair — we are men of peace now”?

The brothers are on the next ship to the U.S. Why not take a plane, fellas? You have all that money you stole from the drug deals in the first movie. Oh right, you need to get yourself a brainless sidekick to replace the mafia package boy Rocco from the first film. Sorry, forgot about that. This time it’s Clifton Collins Jr., who is definitely capable of good acting ( see Traffic, Capote, and Babel. But not here. Instead, he plays a loyal yet dumb Mexican with a dodgy mullet who, despite Duffy’s best efforts, will never, ever look cool or menacing walking in slow-mo.

Obviously failing to appreciate that the best and most interesting thing about the first movie was the gay detective played by Dafoe, Duffy replaces him with a “darn-tootin’ ” southern gal, Eunice Bloom, who is introduced via a close-up of her stiletto heels and some sassy music. If Tarantino had made this mess of a movie, he probably wouldn’t have cast Dexter‘s Julie Benz and probably would have chosen some cooler music and probably would have written better lines for her than the wince-inducing, “I’m so fucking smart I make smart people feel retarded.” Lord have mercy!

Like her predecessor, Special Agent Bloom plugs her ears and reorchestrates the events of the murder of the priest for the benefit of the three loser detectives from the first film. She determines that the murder was the work of a copycat, and she senses it may be an attempt to draw the vigilante brothers out of hiding. (Guess it worked.) Meanwhile, the stereotypical Italian mobsters speculate over who made the call for the hit and become nervous that in returning to seek revenge the brothers may also clean them out.

And that’s pretty much what happens. Duffy relies on predominantly the same plot and storytelling beats, the same flashback structure, the same moronic and uninspired use of the F-word, the same homophobic and racist joshing with the dumb sidekick, the same penchant for double pistol wielding (why not use a bloody machine gun for a change — it’s not like their approach depends on any degree of subtlety), the same Pulp Fiction rip-off prayer-before-execution gag, the same slow-mo slide-and-shoots that are so prolonged it seems like the brothers must be kneeling on one of those moving airport walkways.

It’s sad that having waited so long to be given a second chance to make another movie, Duffy has fallen so short of improving upon the potential of his freshman effort. Instead, this movie is infected with a smugness that he got it right the first time. And by attempting to add some much-needed depth to the characters with a Godfather II inspired origins storyline for the twins’ father, Duffy only succeeds in proving how hollow a story this is. Hopefully, his less than subtle attempts at leaving the film open for a sequel will prove nothing but wishful thinking, as Duffy’s only real talent ten years ago seems to have been riding the waves created by Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Thankfully, Tarantino has long since left him in his wake.

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