A HOOD TO CALL HOME

A GUIDE TO RECOGNIZING YOUR SAINTS:DITO Montiel, socialite, fashion model and writer of showy beat prose, has tweaked the facts in his autobiography and turned it into a film of undeniable class. A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints has Montiel (Robert Downey Jr) travelling home to Queens to tend to his gravely ill father. While he wanders about Astoria he remembers the traumas that preceded his decision to leave for California in 1986.

We see the young Dito, played by a convincing Shia LaBeouf, begin a faltering romance with a sassy girl who works at the local swimming pool. He walks dogs for a flamboyant homosexual. Antonio, his violent best friend, threatens to do the wrong thing in a dispute with some neighbouring Puerto Ricans.

The texture of these scenes is impressively realised. Eric Gautier, cinematographer of The Motorcycle Diaries, casts a glassy nostalgic glow over the filthy streets and the soundtrack, though curiously skewed towards the 1970s, adds juice throughout.

All that noted, the picture, which does many things previously done by Mean Streets and Saturday Night Fever, suffers greatly from its very high opinion of itself. The performances, though technically solid, feature moments of sofa-chewing hysteria that speak more of the actors' desire to act than of any commitment to verisimilitude. Too many scenes - shout, cry, grimace - look like rehearsal room exercises, out of which, after refining, something more subtle might have been fashioned.

Montiel, whatever his own experiences, might also have worked a little harder at unearthing a story that didn't have quite so much to do with fathers and sons. Some weeks it feels as if all American cinema - or that part of it directed by men - is concerned with clarifying how difficult it is to tell dad you love him. The interplay here between Downey Jr and Chazz Palminteri is certainly moving. But, as the characters themselves might say, enough already, you palookas.