A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (2006)

This is a good mid-80s NYC period piece following a bunch of juvenile delinquents. It switches between 1986 and the present, as recollected by Robert Downey Jr.

The setting is wonderful. The whole thing is beautifully made and the cast nails it. The crude teens harrassing everybody in town is a lot of fun to me. It's like Kids, where the teens are getting drunk and suffering adolescent melodrama. Shia LeBeauf is among the teens, mostly a spectator rather than instigator to the gang violence that Channing Tatum's bad attitude keeps egging on. The girls are eye candy, everybody's got issues, and people get fucked up. These teens are trash, and I love it.

What's funny to me is that Shia LeBeauf becomes Robert Downey Jr., and Channing Tatum becomes Eric Roberts. This movie needed levity, after all.

It could have been a trash epic if it added some nudity and shown more of the suggested violence. Instead, it's just a really good movie, which is good enough, made better by its level of trash. Like the scene where they beat a small child with a trash can. Fun times for the whole family.

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