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A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints Image
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Metascore
67 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 25 Critics What's this?

User Score
7.1 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 25 Ratings

Your Score
10 out of 10
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  • Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Shia LaBeouf
  • Summary: A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints is writer/director Dito Montiel's candid debut capturing his youth in the mid-1980s in the toughest neighborhood of Astoria, Queens. Exuding the rawness and authenticity of such classic urban dramas as "Kids," "Mean Streets," "Do the Right Thing" and "Saturday Night Fever," the film is based on Montiel's memoir of the same name. (First Look Pictures)… Expand

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 19 out of 25
  2. Mixed: 6 out of 25
  3. Negative: 0 out of 25
  1. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Don R. Lewis
    90
    Downey Jr. and LaBeouf as Dito as well as Chazz Palminteri as Monty are outstanding. Channing Tatum (who I've never heard of) is also amazing as the tortured soul Antonio.
  2. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Jessica Reaves
    88
    The movie is awash in great performances by actors known and otherwise.
  3. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Rob Nelson
    60
    Whatever the first-time filmmaker lacks in subtlety and finesse--not even the snow-white Sundance Screenwriters Lab could bleach Montiel's script of its corner-deli grit--he recoups by other, more playfully attitudinal means.

See all 25 Critic Reviews

User Reviews

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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 12
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 12
  3. Negative: 2 out of 12
  1. Marco
    10
    Unbelievably beauty, strange poetics, daring choices of voices filtering over scenes and a story that is hard to follow, but draws you in enough to blow your mind away in the end. It seems at time out of balance, but that is the beauty of it. and for some really weird reason, the ending, the compassion, the sincere deeply heartfelt empathy made me even shed a tear.… Expand
    • 1 of 1 users said yes
  2. KenG
    4
    The story and the characters feel very standard for movies from this genre. I felt like I've seen it all many times before. Nothing is done here to make it rise above the pedestrian feel. I'm also getting kind of tired of movies where everybody is miserable, yet the script can't be bothered to suppy enough reason for the characters to as misable as they are. Where the characters are all unhappy, just because of this idea that characters are supposed to be unhappy in movies. Sometimes one of the movies, of which I speak, is done well enough to carry it off, this wasn't one of those times.… Expand
    • 0 of 0 users said yes
  3. NormD.
    3
    This movie is hilariously bad. Another example of an unintelligent, ignorant auteur/author mistaking his trite past for poetry. Another story of stupid people doing stupid things. At least, it was original when scorcese did it in mean streets.… Expand
    • 0 of 1 users said yes

See all 12 User Reviews

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