A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints is a coming-of-age drama that successfully conveys the gritty street life of hardened teens, but is held back by unoriginal, often exhausting dialogue and a handful of scenes that weigh down the overall experience. With some clearer direction, this could have been a real hidden gem of the genre.
The film flashes back and forth between the present and past life of the main character Dito Montiel (Robert Downey Jr.). The past segments focus on Dito as a seventeen-year-old boy (played by Shia LaBeouf) and his group of friends living in New York City. The present scenes show Dito’s return home after 15 years of living in California.
While a majority of the movie is set in the past, I enjoyed the flashing back and forth between the past and present that the film employs. We get to see how decisions in the past affect the future of Dito and his friends. This adds variety to the storytelling that keeps it from feeling like a linear experience. This film starts in the present and we learn how the characters ended up there through deductive storytelling.
There are four boys in Dito’s gang, including Dito. Throughout the film only two of these characters get developed, Dito and Antonio (a young Channing Tatum). The film mostly revolves around their friendship and the relationships they have with their parents. The writer adds subtle details that give us information about these characters, like Antonio’s bruises from his father. By the end of the film the audience can easily feel an emotional connection with Dito and Antonio. If the writer had only spent more time developing the other characters, this film would have had a more all around solid cast.
The dialogue was the most disappointing aspect of this film. It was repetitive, which led to predictable and uninteresting scenes.
“LAURIE: I do
DITO: You do?
LAURIE I do.
DITO: You sure you do?
LAURIE: I’m telling you I fucking do.”
The dialogue can be exhausting and overwhelming at multiple times throughout the movie. The boys and Dito’s parents argue at many points in the film. In these arguments they constantly talk over each other, which normally adds authenticity to a scene, but it felt cluttered here from overuse. When five people are talking at once, the audience does not know who to listen to and cannot fully take in what is being said.
There were also some scenes that did not add significance to the story and could have been left out entirely. For example, near the end when Mike and Dito visit Manny to get paid. Manny, a highly undeveloped character, talks about music and abstract concepts like “being outside yourself”. The writer was probably trying to get some message across, but having such a flat character try to explain complex concept seemed out of place.
Before ‘Step Up’ and ‘Magic Mike,’ he was just your average street thug
Luckily the cinematography had a clear direction that worked well with the other aspects of the film. This is a good example of artistic unification in a production. The shaky, handheld camera shots added to the rough, grainy tone of the film. The color pallet (dark browns and grays) helped add to the emotion.
For three actors I usually can’t stand, Downey Jr., LaBeouf, and Tatum, do a pretty good job. I wouldn’t call it a hidden gem per say, more like a hidden dollar bill. A nice surprise, but something you’ll probably forget about in a few hours.
3 out of 5
-The Critic
Critic For Life 