A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints

I hate, Hate, HATE that Robert Downey Jr. is so flippin' talented. Just when I think I can safely put him on the short list of actors I will NOT watch, he does something brilliant and my righteous ethical distaste for him as a human being is slapped silly by my movie lovin' darkside. Saints is yet another one of those films in which Downey plays a role made for Downey. Damn it.

This is based on the memoir written by Dito Montiel about life growing up on the mean streets of New York. I mean 'based' as in Dito wrote the book about his youth, and then wrote the screenplay and directed the film (Trudie Styler produced.) This isn't a pretty story about coming of age - this is a real story about real, flawed people trying to make a life in a hard place. It's full of family crap, and fear based violence and love and taking care of your own. Senseless things happen. There's a lot of pain. It's quite brilliant.

Downey plays Dito the adult, but the ever impressive Shia LaBeouf fleshes him out as a punk kid with an eye on escaping the life he sees bleeding all around him. Channing Tatum is amazing as his doomed best friend Antonio. The story takes a while to get going, but you'll get hooked early on as you can only guess what finally makes Dito bail. There are some great special features including a scene from the film played out by the real Dito. It takes a lot of courage to take this kind of look at your life... Dito makes it worthwhile for all of us. See the website here.