A compelling coming-of-age drama, featuring standout performances from Shia LaBeouf, Dianne Wiest and a surprisingly excellent Channing Tatum. I enjoyed it a lot.

B+

Outstanding. In my top five of last year.

9/10 (A)

5/10 -> C-

Yet again I'll be the party pooper and say this movie was so average it almost hurts. Perfomances in the movie are OK, but nothing outstanding. There's nothing new or interesting in this movie, which wouldn't be that bad if it was shown in an interesting way, but it isn't.

A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints

It was a good film. The modern day scenes were much more gripping for me than the teenage scenes, but I suppose the earlier scenes set them up so well, so they needed to be in there. Perhaps the modern day scenes were also better because of a lack of Antonio (Channing Tatum) and his abhorrent character traits. I absolutely loathe people like him in this movie. They're angry at life for no reason and with their teenage macho bullshit they are just the scum of the streets, and Tatum was only good in this movie because he's one of these pieces of shit at heart anyway. Shia Labeouf was good as Dito, as he always is anyway. The best performance came from Robert Downey Jr., mostly everything pre-Iron Man he seems to be great in, but since 2008 he's been a wise-cracking knob. I really enjoyed him in this and that's coming from someone that doesn't like him very much. The acting was pretty strong here especially between Shia and his father, Chazz Palminteri, in the bathroom after his friend Mike had been shot. Chazz sure does like to play these sorts of roles. I was unpleasantly surprised to see Eric Roberts in the role an older Antonio. I kind of wish that the director, Dito Montiel, had chosen to shun Antonio in the later scenes.

Personally I don't see it as a coming-of-age drama at all. There's not enough content for it to be one. It consists of a three month span in their youth and then a two day span 20 years later, hardly enough to show the coming of age. For me it's a film about two things; escape and reunion. Two passages in life which we all partake in at some point. I'm currently away from home so I was much more interested in the modern day scenes, and they resonated with me. But the film shys away from violence and the camera work is very ignorant of key points, and for me that's a cop-out. For it to be a hard-hitting social drama, they would have needed to show much more in its 100-minute run time than they did.

Certainly better than the awful Fighting and the boring and utterly pointless The Son of No One. But Dito needs to either stop making movies or stop working with Tatum. It's ruining his career.

C+