| UK new release this week : A GUIDE TO RECOGNIZING YOUR SAINTS [7/10] |
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| Sunday, 25 February 2007 | |
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written for the next issue of Tribune magazine (film released UK on 2nd of March) THE KINGS OF QUEENS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints USA 2006 Starring : Shia LaBeouf, Robert Downey Jr Director : Dito Montiel ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ LOS Angeles, 2001. Dito Montiel (Downey Jr) achieves cult success with his searing memoir of mid-80s New York adolescence, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. He receives an anguished phone-call from his mother Flori (Dianne Wiest), informing him that his father Monty (Chazz Palmintieri) - with whom he hasn't spoken for many years - is gravely ill. Montiel travels home for the first time in a decade and a half and, revisiting his old haunts, remembers his chaotic youth. We see that over the course of a single hot summer in 1986 the young Dito (LaBeouf) packed in enough experiences (good and bad) to last a lifetime - many of them courtesy of his hot-head best friend Antonio (Channing Tatum)... Whatever his faults as writer or director, Montiel can't be accused of having too much distance from his material here. How many of us get the chance to write and direct our own life story - and then get an actor of the calibre of Robert Downey Jr to play us on the big screen? Of course, such a situation isn't risk-free: the project might very easily have come across as an ego-trip, or an exercise in nostalgic self-indulgence But while the ages of the actors and characters never quite makes proper chronological sense, the film turns out to be so consistently engaging - and, in the end, unexpectedly moving - that any such pitfalls are nimbly avoided. After a slightly rocky start, Montiel's grasp of the medium gradually becomes more assured: the picture settles a jazzily relaxed back-and-forth rhythm; the mid-80s atmosphere is pungently evoked; the actors are - crucially - given ample room to explore their roles. In a tight ensemble, Tatum is the unexpected stand-out: as the swaggering - but, we soon realise, painfully insecure - Antonio (a much harder role to pull off that it may first appear) ex-model Tatum exudes some of the bruised street-boy charisma in former decades by the likes of Robert De Niro and Matt Dillon. A star-making performance in a film that finds new, fresh ways to negotiate seemingly-familiar coming-of-age turf. Neil Young 19th February, 2007 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ A GUIDE TO RECOGNISING YOUR SAINTS : [7/10] : USA (US/UK) 2006 : Dito MONTIEL : 94 mins (BBFC timing) seen at Pathe cinema, Rotterdam (Netherlands), 3rd February 2006 - public show (Rotterdam Film Festival / IFFR) |
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