Starring Norman Reedus, Sean Patrick Flanery, and Billy Connelly. Rated 18A. Opens Friday, November 20, at the Cinemark Tinseltown

It’s hard to fault Troy Duffy for ripping off Quentin Tarantino when Tarantino rips himself off. But it’s when the L.A. bartender-cum-filmmaker starts invoking other saints of the gangster flick—say, Francis Ford Coppola, Guy Ritchie, and Martin Scorsese—that things become obnoxious.

His 1999 The Boondock Saints sailed to video-cult-hit status on sheer blood lust and scrappiness. But Duffy has been watching a lot of DVDs in the ensuing decade, and his sequel shoots at a more grandiose scope.

The vigilante Irish brothers (Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus) are back, double-fisting their guns. But this time, Duffy tries to go all Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels on the script, introducing more unlikable characters at every convoluted plot turn, finally switching gears into Godfather-styled drama, with Peter Fonda doing his best Corleone accent. The MacManus boys are hiding out in Ireland when one of their favourite priests gets whacked in Boston (“He’s a good man: youth hostels, soup kitchens”). They head back to put bullet holes in the unintelligible web of Chinese, Russian, and Italian gangsters behind the murder.

Any attempts at self-parody are undercut by the moronic humour (one Mafioso the boys ambush in a tanning bed announces, “I think I just shit my European-cut Speedos”) and pretty distasteful racial stereotypes (Italian mob boss Judd Nelson whacks an underling with a giant salami).

Duffy assembled a surprisingly gifted cast—Billy Connolly as the brothers’ Da, Julie Benz as a stiletto-heeled southern-belle FBI agent, and Sunshine Cleaning standout Clifton Collins Jr. as the goofy Mexican brawler who becomes the lads’ sidekick. But they’re given little to work with, other than over-the-top antics.

The Boondock Saints II probably has enough fuck-you attitude and trashy style to appeal to the converted. To anyone else, try to imagine crass-but-clever Tarantino without the clever part.