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A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints

"My name's Dito. And I'm gonna leave everybody in this film."

And so starts the powerful film adaptation of the memoir by Dito Montiel, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, about an adolescent who abandoned everyone and everything he knew, in search of a different life. At first, many people thought this to be a vanity project (Montiel writing, directing, and casting a film based on the book he wrote about his own life?). When one really thinks about it though, who better to tell the story than the man who lived it?

Slapping a film with the phrase "based on true events" is almost like a get out of jail free card, due to the fact that it could be the most horrible film on the planet, but I'll still sit through it if the events are not as exciting as they should be for a film, but still interesting enough to have really occurred to someone. Fortunately, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints did not have this problem, as it actually could stand alone as nothing but a film.

Dito Montiel (Robert Downey Jr.) is basking in the success of his new book "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints," when he receives distraught phone calls from his mother Flori (Dianne Wiest) and his old friends supplicating that he return home after 20 years of absence. Dito is then forced to revisit his difficult adolescence and to confront the old ghosts of his youth.

It's the hot muggy summer of 1986 (although there's 70's music blasting in the background, but we'll let that one go), and a young Dito Montiel (Shia LaBeouf) and his friends are kicking it in the streets of Astoria, Queens. His muscular, streetwise, and perpetually bruised best friend, Antonio (Channing Tatum) is immediately identified as the leader of the group; Antonio's troubled brother Giuseppe (Adam Scarimbolo) spends most of his time drunk; and Nerf (Peter Anthony Tambakis), is the runt of the group who strives to fit in and stay on everyone's good side.

The boys run around the city annoying subway booth workers and train conductors, who seem to be used to the teens' disrespectful ways. They hang out with girls, get into fights (eventually the boys get themselves at odds with a Latino gang called the Reapers, who have a penchant for vandalism, and eventually threaten Dito's life), and always end up at Dito's house telling his dad, Monty (Chazz Palminteri), all about their misadventures. Monty, who obviously loves when the kids come over, has a distinct affinity to Antonio, who he knows the teens respect- a fact that isn't lost on Dito, who we sometimes feel would rather have a dad

who is a father and not his friend. His escape from his crazy life is his girlfriend Laurie, who's naïve, yet supportive, and seems to be able to see further than anyone in the story.

At the start of the film, there's a nostalgic tone to all of it – even the parts when everyone on screen is screaming or saying things simultaneously (very reminiscent of old 70's indie flicks, which I guess would be appropriate considering the soundtrack, but we'll still let that one go). Eventually, Dito meets a Scottish boy named Mike O'Shea (Martin Compston) who shows him that there is a world outside of Queens, gets him a job as a dog walker, and introduces him to music. They decide they want to move to California and start a band, an idea that does not fare too well with his protective best friend Antonio, or with Monty, who has the firm belief that everything one could need is in New York: "If you want to go to China, go to Chinatown." Feeling trapped and alone, Dito's existence quickly becomes a real-life nightmare when things quickly begin to fall apart all around him.

In The Making of A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Robert Downey Jr. says of the book, "You couldn't really call it a book. It's kind of a series of disjointing, brilliant vignettes." I guess one could say the same thing of the film. The editing can be a little confusing, and the audio editing is trippy. Yet I think that's what worked for this movie. The acting was spectacular from Dianne Wiest as the distraught, heartbroken mother while Channing Tatum was good as the bully with underlying issues. Chazz Palminteri was extremely believable as Monty, and the film itself bore some similarities to Palminteri's A Bronx Tale. Shia LeBeouf is definitely in his best role ever while Robert Downey Jr. and Rosario Dawson, who plays the grown-up Laurie give fine performances, as always.

This is ultimately a story about people who are just afraid. Monty, a man who obviously has no social life outside of his son's friends coming over to tell him the events of the day, is afraid to be alone, further, he's afraid of the outside world. Antonio, who beneath his tough exterior yearns for love and acceptance, is also afraid to lose the only people who love him, Dito and his family. Dito's girlfriend, Laurie (Melonie Diaz) who has resigned herself to the fact that everyone will leave her, yet has a glimmer of hope that we're so used to seeing in the young and naïve, is also afraid. Depressingly enough, we know from the beginning that all the fears these people have will come to pass when Dito leaves. Yet the inspiring story is definitely worth watching, and a fine directing debut for Dito Montiel. "In the

end, I left everything and everyone, but no one has ever left me."

The highlights of the special features on the DVD are the director's commentary with Dito Montiel and Editor Jake Pushinski, and a segment called Shooting Saints: Making of A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. It also has alternate openings and endings, as well as deleted scenes.

Movie Grade: A-

DVD Features Grade: A-

Overall Grade: A-