Superb performances and a gripping retrospective plotline make this tough cookie an entertaining one, even if its adult story strand is weighed down with vagaries.
A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (2006)
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Reviews Counted:93
Fresh:70
Rotten:23
Average Rating:6.6/10
Consensus: A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints is a lively, powerful coming-of-age tale with winning performances and sharp direction from first-timer Dito Montiel.
Rated: 15 [See Full Rating] for pervasive language, some violence, sexuality, and drug use.
Runtime: 1 hr 38 mins
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:02-03-2007
Synopsis: Writer Dito Montiel's highly cinematic memoir of his childhood in Queens, New York, makes the leap to the big screen, with the author himself getting behind the camera to helm this powerful, and at... Writer Dito Montiel's highly cinematic memoir of his childhood in Queens, New York, makes the leap to the big screen, with the author himself getting behind the camera to helm this powerful, and at times gut-wrenching, adaptation. The film flits back and forth between the adult Montiel's (Robert Downey Jr.) emotional return to the neighborhood after a 15-year gap, and the childhood antics that led to his younger self (played by Shia LeBouf) fleeing to Los Angeles in 1986. Downey's older brother Montiel is an introspective, quietly successful author who comes home after he is informed of his father's (Chazz Palminteri) life-threatening illness. LeBouf's teenage Montiel is a young tearaway who runs into constant trouble with his gang of friends, falls in love with local looker Laurie (Rosario Dawson), and dreams of an escape from the city with his Scottish friend, Mike (Martin Compston). The balance of the film tilts in favor of the kids, with most of the action taking place in 1986. These scenes acutely capture the punishing heat of the New York City summer, with the teenage gang soaked in sweat and dirt as they trample through their crumbling Queens ghetto. Channing Tatum gives a terrifying performance as Montiel's violent young friend, Antonio, and Palminteri is equally intimidating, filling the screen with palpable rage as he barks at the older and younger versions of his son. The skittish narrative makes frequent lurches through the decades, and also sees characters frequently breaking the fourth wall by directly addressing the audience, recalling the work of writer-director team Guillermo Arriaga and Alejandro González Iñárritu (21 GRAMS, AMORES PERROS). Montiel couples this with the gritty stylistic verve of classic New York movies such as MEAN STREETS and SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, ultimately transforming SAINTS into the perfect distillation of two separate eras in an ever-evolving city. [More]
Starring: Robert Downey, Rosario Dawson, Shia LaBeouf, Chazz Palminteri
Starring: Robert Downey, Rosario Dawson, Shia LaBeouf, Chazz Palminteri, Dianne Wiest, Eric Roberts, Channing Tatum
Director: Dito Montiel
Director: Dito Montiel
Screenwriter: Dito Montiel
Producer: René Bastian, Lucy Cooper
Composer: Jonathan Elias
Studio: First Look
Reviews for A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
It positively crackles with energy, featuring startlingly raw performances from a cast that also includes Shia LaBeouf as the young Dito. And if it looks ragged around the edges, that's as it should be.
The real star is Channing Tatum as the alpha-chimp leader of Dito's pack. The camera doesn't just love him, it wants to marry him, settle down, and have his babies.
Over-indulgent but often interesting and ambitious in its attempt to recreate the free-wheeling, jazz-improvisational feel of classic independent 70s cinema.
Well acted and never less than watchable but it's not particularly engaging and you'll definitely feel like you've seen it all before.
The plot itself might not break much new ground, but the telling, by both cast and crew, makes this a memoir to remember.
A deserved hit at Sundance, Guide plays like Stand By Me crossed with Kids. It’s as promising, beautiful and gritty as its onscreen ‘saints’.
A decent enough calling-card picture that swaggers even as it stumbles.
Ambitious coming-of-age drama, this may hit a false note here or there but the performances are magnetic.
Has rather too much attitude for a simple tale about making peace with your past.
Dito Montiel adapts his autobiographical 2001 novel into a vivid slice-of-life drama from the Jim Carroll school of disaffected coming-of-age New York journalism.
It is its very autobiographical roots that make Saints an emotional wallop, a raw, authentic work that is, at its defiant core, violently and unrestrainedly alive.
Given all the filmed memory pieces about screaming, violent Italian-American families in New York boroughs, I'm not especially thrilled by even a well-made example.
I love the scenes with young people in the middle of a hot New York summer, talking to one another like panthers circling.
the adult scenes, though providing the film with structural ballast, also weigh it down.
...ultimately undone by Montiel's relentlessly ostentatious sense of style...
It’s a movie about the nature of time, about getting older and struggling to connect with who we once were. And above all, it’s a story about taking a breather from the marathon of life to find our way home.
Montiel's first effort remains episodic and inward, failing to build a bridge to the viewer.
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