A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints

Dito Montiel grew up to be a model for Versace and Calvin Klein. His punk band, Gutterboy, were signed to Geffen Records for a million dollars (though you could be forgiven for never having heard of them.) He was befriended by Beat poet Allen Ginsberg and even enjoyed 15 New York minutes in Warhol's Factory.

None of this colourful material makes it into Montiel's movie of his autobiographical memoir, a recollection of adolescent misadventures in Queens, New York, in the mid-1980s, framed by Dito's delayed return to the old neighbourhood to visit his ailing father.

True story or no, it's a familiar tale of a sensitive kid with an insensitive dad who doesn't exactly hide his preference for his son's knucklehead mates. Over the long hot summer of '86 young Dito (Shia LaBoeuf) comes to realise he's got to put his family and friends behind him or stay rooted to the spot forever. There have been versions of this story in every city in the world - Nick Love made Southeast London's version, Goodbye Charlie Bright - but there are strong local echoes here from Mean Streets and Saturday Night Fever, to name just two.

What sets A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints apart is the mixed emotions occasioned by the contemporary story. Dito (played as an older man with palpable - and appropriate - discomfort by Robert Downey Jr) knows he did the right thing by leaving, but he still feels pangs of nostalgia and regret as he returns to his old stomping ground and guilt too, for turning his back on the old man (Chazz Palminteri). Spying his old girlfriend Laurie (a lovely, subtle performance from Rosario Dawson) in the very same corner window he knew her from 15 years before, he has to wonder what might have been.

Montiel's life may not be unique exactly, but he's a natural director. Indeed, he won the directing prize at Sundance last year, where the film also picked up a special jury prize. This is the debut of someone who loves movies, but hasn't had his wayward ideas beaten out of him by film school or apprenticeship in television. It's sometimes clumsy, but the rhythms are odd and fresh, there's a new wave feel about it that makes even the hackneyed scenes feel authentic and surprising. (The expressive cinematography is by Eric Gaultier, one the rising stars of the craft.)

And underlying it all is immense tenderness for these characters: even angry, bitter Palminteri, we understand it's his fear of abandonment that makes him beat down on his boy's dreams.

The acting across the board is vivid and true: whether it's Channing Tatum buring up the screen as Dito's tearaway buddy Antonio (the De Niro role), or Dianne Wiest quietly affecting as his mum. Even Eric Roberts, by and large a terrible ham, turns in a finely judged, very moving cameo at the end - it may be the best work he's ever done. Good to see Martin Compson, too, the young lad from Ken Loach's Sweet Sixteen, making a lively impression as Mike, whose California dreamin' inspires Dito to walk the walk.

Tom Charity
tom.charity@lovefilm.com