I had the opportunity to view a showing of Meskada at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 24, 2010
Archives: detective
Review: Ministers, The (2009)
Twins ridding the world of evil? Set in a city? The police are after these vigilantes? Huh… I thought I saw a movie like this in 1999…
Though there are a bunch of similarities between The Ministers and The Boondock Saints, the storylines were different enough to warrant a review.
On her birthday, Celeste was walking to the car with her parents. She witnessed a masked gunman put his pistol to her fathers head and pull the trigger. As she stood there in shock, a second masked man handed her a religious pamphlet.
Ten years later, Celeste had taken up her father’s reins and was working in the Bronx police department. A murder that mimicked her fathers pushed her to believe that the Ministers had returned.
During this time of woe, she falls for a man she meets in church. A man, who was actually one of the two that murderered her father.
All in all, the movie was engaging. You get to learn about why the Ministers were inspired to be vigilantes and why her father had been killed.
I think what kept me most entertained was the fact that John Leguizamo played both Perfecto and Dante (aka “the Ministers”). He played each character differently, but had a large visual difference in each one. Perfecto had an enormous scar on his face.
Was it absolutely necessary to have that visual ploy to differentiate the brothers? I don’t think so. John adopted different mannerisms and the editing was clean. Yes, it did tie in to the plot of the movie, but it was extreme. If I had to sum up the movie in one sentence… The Ministers is Darkman meets the Boondock Saints with a little Crow tossed in the mix.