A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints

Set in Queens during the sweltering summer of 1986, sensitive 16-year-old Dito (LeBeouf) lives at home with his hot-tempered father Monty (Palminteri), a Nicaraguan immigrant married to Irish-American Flori (Weist). Monty makes Dito feel inadequate and has more affection for his son's sociopathic friend, Antonio (Channing Tatum). Dito dreams of escape but Monty, who never hits him but employs a different form of child abuse in destroying his dreams at every turn, refuses to let him go. Seen through the eyes of the grown up Dito (Downing Jr.), who arrives back in Queens fifteen years later to visit his dying father, A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints is not only a masterclass in acting (even the normally deadwood Tatum shines), but also a great story that sucks you in from the outset. It's an accomplished film for a first time writer/director, who based the film on his own memoirs, and even though he might take the easy way out from time to time (his characters breaking the fourth wall is the calling card of a rookie), that's just guilty nitpicking. The characters feel like real people instead of actors spouting lines from a script and LeBeouf is the pick of the bunch, allowing toughness and softness to overlap each other. He's in good company as Downing Jr. continues his recent resurgence and Weist and Palminteri all make a welcome return.