3 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund
If you've got genuine New York gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe, chances are Dito Montiel wants to shoot it. A model turned punk rocker turned adapter of his own gritty writing, the Astoria-raised multi-hyphenate has an infatuation with the decay and grime of his home metropolis, a self-reflective proclivity that yields a kind of pulled-from-the-gutter ambiance. With the crooked-cop drama The Son of No One, the guy who brought you the autobiographical, memoir-based A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints translates another self-penned story, and in the process offers an interpretation of New York that's consummately ugly. In shaky-cam shots that often seem to be spliced together with a knowing choppiness, Montiel captures bloody bathtubs, bum fights, low-income housing, and rooftop fellatio as if documenting some greasy nightmare, his pulpy, tactile visions less real than surreal.
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