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.
Comment
02/27/08
A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (2006)
75 %
Reviews Counted: 92 Fresh: 69 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
Runtime: 1 hr 38 mins
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 times gut-wrenching, adaptation. The film flits back and forth between the adult Montiel's... [More]
Genre: Dramas
Starring: Robert Downey, Rosario Dawson, Shia LaBeouf, Chazz Palminteri, Dianne Wiest
Director: Dito Montiel
Screenwriter: Dito Montiel
Producer: René Bastian, Lucy Cooper
Composer: Jonathan Elias
Screenwriter: Dito Montiel
Producer: René Bastian, Lucy Cooper
Composer: Jonathan Elias
Reviews
Top Critic
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.
07/31/07
Top Critic
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.
03/30/07
Over-indulgent but often interesting and ambitious in its attempt to recreate the free-wheeling, jazz-improvisational feel of classic independent 70s cinema.
03/03/07
Top Critic
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.
03/01/07
The plot itself might not break much new ground, but the telling, by both cast and crew, makes this a memoir to remember.
02/28/07
Top Critic
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’.
02/27/07
A decent enough calling-card picture that swaggers even as it stumbles.
02/27/07
Ambitious coming-of-age drama, this may hit a false note here or there but the performances are magnetic.
02/27/07
Top Critic
Has rather too much attitude for a simple tale about making peace with your past.
10/28/06
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.
02/28/08
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.
02/27/08
I love the scenes with young people in the middle of a hot New York summer, talking to one another like panthers circling.
09/06/07
the adult scenes, though providing the film with structural ballast, also weigh it down.
07/06/07
Despite such rarely-observed hubris, first-time filmmaker [Dito] Montiel managed to make a strong motion picture.
06/26/07
...ultimately undone by Montiel's relentlessly ostentatious sense of style...
04/07/07
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.
03/07/07
Montiel's first effort remains episodic and inward, failing to build a bridge to the viewer.
03/01/07
%u03B1%u03C0' %u03C4%u03B1 %u03B1%u03BE%u03B9%u03BF%u03BB%u03BF%u03B3%u03CC%u03C4%u03B5%u03C1%u03B1 %u03BD%u03C4%u03B5%u03BC%u03C0%u03BF%u03CD%u03C4%u03B1 %u03C4%u03B7%u03C2 %u03C7%u03C1%u03BF%u03BD%u03B9%u03AC%u03C2, %u03B2%u03C1%u03B1%u03B2%u03B5%u03C5%
01/27/07
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