This movie was alright to me. I know other people have enjoyed this movie. I do think that it shows the struggled of lower class life In New York and how much pride the youth can hold. With that pride it affects, families, relationships, etc. Channing Tatum also surprised me because like other reviews have said he stepped out of his comfort zone to play an angry character.

Given all the filmed memory pieces about screaming, violent Italian- American families in New York boroughs, I'm not usually thrilled by even good examples. However director Dito Montiel adapts his autobiographical book, most of it set in the mean streets of Astoria in the early 80s. Robert Downey Jr. plays Montiel, who goes home to visit his estranged father (Chazz Palminteri), occasioning flashbacks to his younger self (Shia LaBeouf), his pals, and a violent feud involving graffiti and a baseball bat. With Rosario Dawson, Dianne Wiest, Channing Tatum, and Eric Roberts. Lovable the scenes with young people in the middle of a hot New York summer, talking to one another like panthers circling. Overall it's worth it.

Kind of movie to determine a trip in your universe. Self definition. Ballas of memories. Faces of friends and family members, images of birth place and events of lost ages. An experience but in a strange form. Behind that, a good, real good film. Great cast and usual Robert Downwy jr. Bricks from America as pieces of puzzle. Speech about friendship and freedom, values and love, sense of gestures and returns, roots and teenage circle. And more. The words without letters, the emotions like smoke or snow, the images of people and streets, the perfume of past who is not base for future, all ordinaries facts , without importance but essentials for time of answers when questions are just ash flowers.The saints, saints of this film are shadows of every meeting. Silouettes, crumbs, just men and women , strange, boring, without any relevance. But sick, need of reconciliation, a girl who is mother today, 20 years, a friend in prison breaks appearances. And finish becomes beginning. So recognize your saints.

A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (2006)The premise of the movie is a total slice of life in a changing ethnic neighborhood in Queens, mostly with conflict between Puerto Rican and Italian immigrant families and their kids. It's often raw, violent, sexual, and depraved. It's also laced with beauty, has real family loyalty, and is a picture of survival. It portrays in particular one family and the conflicts in it with particular urgency.Overall, the movie is highly realistic. It pulls only a couple punches (a little boy gets beaten up on the street and it isn't shown). But all the other violence, the sex, the near rapes (depending on how you look at it), the anger and the misunderstood anger, all of it is wearing. I have to say I didn't enjoy a lot of it just because it was so unpleasant. Even when the light glowed and the train glided overhead on the El and a family was being peaceful and loving, there was an underlying anxiety and ominousness that made watching it an uneasy process.This might be a sign of a great film, or a good one. I don't want to disagree with those that find this mise-en-scene enough. There is a feeling of meandering plot, or no plot at all, through most of it. If other movies that try to address the problems and reality of the hood are more readable (Spike Lee has a couple, or Larry Clark's Kids, as starters), this one has the benefit of not being pigeon-holed. It's just a ride through the times, a snapshot, sincere and feeling.Robert Downey Jr. is a small presence, actually, and doesn't always fit in quite right, and in fact the peaceful quality of his portions of the film are easily mistaken for the most boring. Dianne Wiest is a fabulous actress but she seems miscast--though the director ought to know who represented his mother best. The whole movie is based on the real life of the director, Dito Montiel, and it has an authentic feel, though Wikipedia makes clear it's full of mistakes for a movie set in the mid 1980s. Not that it really matters. It's the energy of the youth that gives it its recklessness, which is what its all about. Forget about making sense of it. It's just the real deal on some level, and convincing enough to be artful. The filming, and editing, make up for a lot of the lack of narrative sense. It's not about sense, it's about being there, it's about the experience of traveling through the scenes.