Saturday,
October 14, 2006
"A Guide to Recognizing Your
Saints" a Combo of Italian-American Graffiti & Mean Streets"
The
ANNOTICO Report
Dito Montiels
writer-director debut feature, has a certain validity.
A Scorsese-lite Mean Streets for a
new generation, the film is an autobiographical
memoir of Montiels childhood in 1980s,
working-class
It
stars Robert Downey Jr. and Chazz Palminteri, and is produced by Sting and wife Trudie Styler.
Gritty Urban Tale
Saints Will Get Viewers Blessing
By James Verniere
Film Critic
Friday,
October 13, 2006
"A Guide to Recognizing
Your Saints"
Scorsese-lite is the label that has been attached to Dito Montiels debut feature,
A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, with a certain
validity. A Mean Streets for a new generation, the film is an
autobiographical memoir of Montiels childhood in
1980s, working-class
|
|
Dito (Shia LaBeouf
as a young man, Robert Downey Jr. as an adult) is just another street kid,
hanging out and getting into trouble with friends Antonio (a Robert De Niro-esque Channing Tatum); Guiseppe,
a hotheaded bruiser; the runt Nerf (Peter Anthony Tambakis);
and musical Scot newcomer Mike (Martin Compston).
|
|
At
Ditos home, his ineffectual father (Chazz Palminteri) sits at the
kitchen table dispensing wisdom and repairing electronics equipment while his
dutiful and affectionate mother (Dianne Wiest) dishes
out love with the food and beverages.
|
|
Produced
by, among others, Sting and wife Trudie Styler, the film lacks narrative substance and often
meanders as much as its listless young men. But writer-director Montiel, a former hardcore rocker adapting his memoir of
the same title, is good with dialogue and has a genuine filmmaking gift for
transforming everyday action into a kind of sexualized
urban poetry.
|
|
The
action involves a phone call to Dito from his mother
informing him his father is ill and Ditos return
to
|
|
The
cast is uneven but for the most part good, especially newcomer Melonie Diaz as Ditos
girlfriend, Anthony DeSando as a gay Italian-American
dog-walker and the aforementioned Tatum.
|
|
As
much Italian-American Graffiti as Mean Streets, A
Guide to Recognizing Your Saints is nevertheless an impressive debut and a
promise of better things to come.
|
|
(A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints contains violence, profanity and
brief nudity.)
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