Adaptation of Dito Montiel's mid-80s memoir of life on the hot, sweat-soaked streets of New York, recalling early Scorsese, as two lives converge on tragedy. Stars Robert Downey Jr and Shia LaBeouf.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2007
A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints 2006
Thrown out of high-school for fighting with security guards, Dito Montiel wrote a book that became a film about growing up. There is a sense of early Scorsese in the gritty realism that permeates his mid-eighties memoir: New York’s hot, sweat-soaked streets are brimming with physical and emotional tension that recall Travis Bickle at his most anguished. Rising star Shia LaBeouf plays teenage Dito, a kid desperate to break a myopic cycle of violence that substitutes for life in his neighbourhood. Robert Downey Jr is Montiel’s successful, older self who’s heading home after a long absence. Together they create a rousing portrait of village life in a tight-knit New York community where change is viewed with distrust and fear. Montiel’s jumbled time-line and discordant editing builds a frenetic and anxious tone as two lives converge on tragedy, powerfully evoked by a revelatory Channing Tatum. Impassioned and rough, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints is a deeply personal film delivered from the heart.