A story of an important summer on the violent streets of Astoria, Queens. This summer changed not only Dito Montiel, but the lives of everyone around him. He is torn between his ill father (Chazz Palminteri) and his friend and protector Antonio (Channing Tatum).Dito (Shia LaBeouf as the young Dito and Robert Downey Jr. as the adult Dito) struggles against wanting to escape from everything he knows or stay. He finds redemption 15 years later when he returns to Queens and faces the “Saints” that have influenced his life. This is a beautiful story that is by far one of my favorite independent films. First time director Dito Montiel, brings his actual life story to the screen and portrays the city with an amazing grit. This film was produced by Charlie Corwin, Clara Markowicz, Trudie Styler, and Travis swords and they gambled letting Dito direct the movie due to his lack of experience. Which I feel pays off in the end due to him disobeying all the rules and creating something new.
As I mentioned above this was the first time Dito Montiel has directed anything. He was born and raised in Queens, New York and eventually moved away from everyone he knew and headed out to California. There he became a successful writer and wrote his life story in a book titled A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. This book would launch his career and he would turn this book into a movie.
This film was entered into two different festivals. Deauville Festival of American Cinema (Competition) September 1-10, 2006 and at Sundance Film Festival (Independent Dramatic Competition) January 19-29, 2006. At Sundance it walked away as winner of the Dramatic Directing Award and the Special Jury Prize for Best Ensemble Performance. After the festival scene they got distribution with First Look Pictures and it still stands like that today.
This film was well accepted by many critics according to Rottentomatoes.com.
This press release discusses the film's release to DVD.
The film would eventually gross $517,809 domestically and $1,517659 foreign. The way audiences across America viewed the film, differed from town to town. Some people understood the message that Dito Montiel was trying to get across. Others thought that his film was very amateurish and didn't appreciate it.
But I feel one thing that really helped the film out was the fact that it had great visual advertisement. If you look at the poster at the top of the blog you'll realize exactly what I'm talking about. The poster speaks out and I think helps define the grittiness that you'll find in the film. Another amazing piece of advertisement for the film was the trailer. This is actually what made me want to watch the movie. Just 30 seconds into the trailer and I guarantee you'll be interested.
There is absolutely nothing that I would do different on how they marketed this film. I believe that they really wanted to sell how this film represents city life and they got it. If I was in charge I would make sure that every major city in the U.S. would see the advertisement for the film.
