A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints - Plot

Plot

Dito (Robert Downey Jr.) is a successful writer in Los Angeles. One day, after being urged by his mother, Flori (Dianne Wiest), and his friend, Nerf (Scott Campbell), Dito visits his childhood home, Astoria, New York, because his father has suddenly become very ill. The film switches back and forth between the present and flashbacks with Dito's memories in the summer of 1986.

Dito meets Nerf, and talks with him in a parked car, where they can talk undisturbed, which would not have been possible at Nerf's house. Dito then visits Laurie (Rosario Dawson), his childhood sweetheart, who is now a mother. They only talk through the open window; she does not let him in. Dito finally visits his father, Monty (Chazz Palminteri). Monty used to ignore Dito's feelings, and he didn't want Dito to travel. He is angry at Dito for leaving, and for not returning sooner to visit; he then sends Dito away. Laurie urges him to be a man and come to terms with his father, who was heartbroken when he left. Dito does leave, but returns later, to insist that he takes his father to the hospital.

Antonio (Channing Tatum), an overconfident, volatile boy with an abusive father, eventually kills someone: the Puerto Rican gangmember Reaper (Michael Rivera), as payback for an attack on Dito.

Dito remembers Antonio's younger brother, Giuseppe (Adam Scarimbolo) - reckless, destructive, and possibly insane. In the 1980s, Giuseppe lay on a subway track; in spite of urgent warnings from his brother Antonio and Nerf, that a train was coming, he failed to get back on the platform and was killed

Mike O'Shea (Martin Compston), another friend of Dito's, was a Scottish boy who dreamed of becoming a musician. Mike and Dito had planned to go to California on a bus. They worked for a gay man, Frank (Anthony de Sando), with a dog-walking business. They went to his house to collect the wages he was slow in paying. At first he did not listen to them, but then he gave them all the money he kept in the refrigerator, more than he owed them and told them to leave town. Shortly after, Mike was murdered by a member of a Puerto Rican gang in retaliation for the murder of Reaper, after which Dito travelled alone to California.

Dito visits the adult Antonio (Eric Roberts) in prison and sees him as a changed man of wisdom. The film concludes with the two of them sitting down in conversation.