Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, A

Film Threat Don R. Lewis

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.

Chicago Tribune Jessica Reaves

The movie is awash in great performances by actors known and otherwise.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

This gallantly imperfect indie pops with attitude.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

It's forceful and alive and spilling over with crazy poetry.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

In "A Guide," passion and imagination go a long way in transforming seemingly conventional material and characters.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

hough the picture is wrenching, at times devastating, it leaves you with that buoyant feeling of having encountered a raw, authentic work of art.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

This is an exceptionally assured debut, and Montiel exhibits rare care with editing and sound design. His real forte, though, is casting, to which a brief scene featuring Downey and the incandescent Rosario Dawson powerfully attests.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

Compelling.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Most viewers will discover this picture - and it is worth discovering - when it is released on DVD.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

This is a gifted director who actually has something to say and knows how to say it. We'll be hearing from him again.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Scenemaker Dito Montiel's rough, grating memoir of growing up in a poor, violent section of Astoria, Queens, in the mid-1980s features a few too many arty flourishes, but also packs a raw power that's hard to shake.

Slate Dana Stevens

Like the boys, Montiel's first film is rough and uneven, with more energy than it knows what to do with. But it still manages to feel fresh and authentic, perhaps because it's so deeply autobiographical.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

The film feels like an earnest retread over old territory, albeit one that intermittently comes to life thanks to an amazing cast, expressive cinematography by French master Eric Gautier (Irma Vep), and Montiel's obviously heartfelt sentiments.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

One of the American cinema's rare excursions into pure autobiography: the movie is Montiel's own coming-of-age story, with little or nothing disguised as fiction.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints is inchoate, but it demonstrates that instincts and brio can compensate for a lot.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

As it dips in and out of the boys' lives, and occasionally wanders back to the contemporary Dito surveying the old neighbourhood, Saints never really integrates its two time periods.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

The first-time filmmaker aspires to show us what caused him to leave his neighborhood and stay gone for 20 years. All I can really glean is that the place was too loud.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

The framing sequences with Downey and the climactic scenes between father and son are a mess. Downey, at 41, is too old to be playing a character who can be no more than 31 or 32, and 50-year-old Eric Roberts is an even greater distraction as Montiel's imprisoned friend Antonio.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

For my money, if I'm in the mood for the kind of aesthetic and emotional experience Saints is selling, I'll just blast Jim Carroll's more concise (and rocking!) "People Who Died" out of my iPod.

Variety Robert Koehler

Writer-director Montiel creates a movie of many parts that don't always congeal. Mix this with the many meaty scenes and a roster of often exceptional actors and the effect is one of a fabulous acting showcase more than a wholly finished work.

Village Voice Rob Nelson

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.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Given all the filmed memory pieces about screaming, violent Italian-American families in New York boroughs, I'm not especially thrilled by even a well-made example.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

The story of Dito escaping and then facing his demons is meaningful. But that story is so buried in actorly noise that it feels false.

The Hollywood Reporter Duane Byrge

After a while, the crudeness and venality of the central characters proves as stifling as the incessant Queens summer heat does to our dubious protagonists.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

I suspect this guy can make a good movie if he learns the right lessons; he's made about half of one here. But the praise heaped upon A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints is way too much, way too soon.