A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (2006)

The Worst Film Ever

Good movie but grossly overrated

A lot of fun.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

This movie did a great job at teaching you to take control of your life. I believe if each character took control of their life sooner events in the movie wouldn't escalate. What i did like was how the author portray new York he took time off to put in scenes where it showed hot summer, dirty subway stations, trains, corner stores which is all still alive in new York city today. Another thing i liked is how he got characters out of their comfort zone every body knows channing tatum to be a romantic kind of guy in movie but in this movie he was the hot headed and angry kid that did anything he wanted to the point of watching his brother die. The author also did an excellent job at showing that it is important for parents to listen to their kids. Throughout the movie you can see that dito's father never listened to him and always aired in his opinion and that backfired in this face when dito suddenly snapped because his dad never listened to him. As a result showing viewers that it is important for them to pay attention to their kids. At the end of the movie what i liked was how the author showed the lives of the characters after years and i thought that was necessary to show they grew as a person.Overall it was a good movie.

film grabs your attention and jerks at your emotional draw strings. Its unapologetic in its true life portrayal of NY in the 80s. This on screen adaptation of the autobiography tells the story of teens stuck in a gridlock of violence. Loved it and would recommend it. Robert Downey Jr does an amazing job. Channing Tatum surprisingly steps out of his comfort zone to play an angry hot headed and misguided friend of the Dito Shia labouf. The film was entertaining and I would not hesitate to recommend it to all. I watched the film before reading the book, now I'm excited to read the book. You really feel like you can connect with some of the characters.

Dito Montiel's A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints takes the style and approach similar to Robert De Niro's A Bronx Tale and Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, which both overshadow this film for their grandscale look on issues and the exploration into certain relationships and how they grow and decimate over time. All three films possess common attributes; all three take place in a part of New York, they are directed by first-timers, they are stories that the men hold close to their hearts, all utilize the storytelling method of narration or breaking the fourth wall in some way, and they focus on a large group of characters all with something to say. Whether it's worth hearing or not is up to you.A Bronx Tale effected me in a way that totally came out of left field. By delivering its brutal honesty with cold, authentic realism was audacious and showcasing three exquisite talents (one of them, Chazz Palminteri, present here), it delivered a coming of age drama, deeper and more reliant on values than any one I've previously seen. Do the Right Thing was a crisp, lively drama relying on racial tensions and impending chaos that would ensue from enduring a brutally hot day in Brooklyn. Spike Lee brilliantly concocted tension through character development and human conversation, and almost implying, throughout the course of the entire film, that no character did "the right thing." But whatever your definition of the right thing was, you could disagree with me.Montiel is more interested with telling his story more than tacking on a fancy moral or showing any deep, subversive element in particular, which is perfectly fine with me. His close-to-home story is buoyant on its own, relying on strong performances from charismatic leads and is elevated by bright, humid, and mercilessly seamy cinematography. Montiel himself is our protagonist, played in his later years by Robert Downey Jr., a successful writer, yet absent family-man, Dito's mother calls him one day, twenty years after leaving behind his home in Queens, to return home to convince his father (Chazz Palminteri) to go to the hospital after falling gravely ill. Upon returning home, he sees Queens isn't much different, still crime-infested and relatively unprotected from the destructive youth and the passive adults, but notices that his longtime friends' ambitions of being lawless and as juvenile as possible have surged into adulthood.This story is spliced with flashbacks from 1986, the year when Dito (Shia LeBeouf) abandoned everything he erected in Queens, when Dito was only concerned about hanging with his friends Antonio (Channing Tatum), Laurie (Melonie Diaz), and Mike (Martin Compston), causing trouble and wreaking havoc. The film casually follows the youth's events and run-ins with relationships, sexual encounters, conversations, and troubled instances, and often showing their home-lifes as the least of their concerns.Palminteri gives a wonderful performance here, confidently lax, yet remarkably genuine and subdued, often providing his son Dito with father-like guidance that often gets ignored when the going gets tough. When Dito is seen in present time, he is unforgiven by his father who views his move to leave home not noble and commendable, like some would, but rather shameful and deviant. He views his son's return home as no more than a cop out move, somewhat more shameful than him leaving. His offer to make amends feels forced and trite and he ain't buying it.A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints consistently maintains a gritty atmosphere and always feels alive and raw, even when it's at its calmest times. The performances, mainly from LeBeouf, Tatum, Downey Jr., Palminteri, and Rosario Dawson, who could've benefited from more screen time, use the story's difficult themes of family relations and devotions to their favor, and never does much of this lack genuine feeling, thanks to Mantiel manning the camera and working the pen on this project. To call this film "solid" would be sort of an understatement, yet to call this "groundbreaking" or even "wonderful" would be a bit much. I'll go with "meaningful:" seems to meet them halfway.Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Shia LaBeouf, Rosario Dawson, Melonie Diaz, Chazz Palminteri, Martin Compston, Eric Roberts, Channing Tatum, Dianne Wiest. Directed by: Dito Montiel.

I don't really feel like a need to add a summary here. All the people who have seen the movie know the story already but I believe that there is a deeper meaning to it. Much as James Joyce's Ulysses has the same story as the Odyssey but it is adapted to early 20th century Dublin with a more syncopated, modern, staccato style so this modern days American Graffiti is based in Astoria in the '80s. I don't know if anybody read the movie the same way. It is basically the same story: some young boys dreaming of leaving the oppression of a place with no future. But only one will leave, the others will be condemned to a bleak, boring future of drugs and joblessness. Give or take something and allow for changes in time, attitude,culture and place this really is a modern days American Graffiti. Great movie. Intense and absorbing if not technically accomplished. it speaks even to people who don't know where Astoria is because it talks of problems we all are familiar with.