Want to feel happy? Turn on Minor Threat. They’ll turn any frown, upside down.
Jude (Asa Butterfield) was adopted by Harriet (Julianne Nicholson), after the father, Les (Ethan Hawke), went off to do whatever it is that Les does. Occasionally, he’s with Di (Emily Mortimer), but most of the time, Les spends his time hanging around, listening to sweet jams, and of course, smoking reefer. The times are good for Les, but as for everybody else around him? Well, not so much. For one, Jude is reeling over the recent death of his very best friend. Di’s daughter, Eliza (Hailee Steinfeld), also finds out that she’s pregnant, which may seem like no big thing, except for the fact that the father of the unborn baby is also Jude’s best friend who just died. So basically, this causes a lot of commotion and drama for all parties involved, where certain people learn to grow up, and others, well, sink themselves into hard-rocking, loud-as-hell punk rock music. Because, after all, it’s the 80’s, and what better time to start thrashing to some hardcore?
Ten Thousand Saints is a movie I’d like to classify under a category that I call, “Indieocrity”. Whenever an indie film is made, regardless of who it’s with, or what it’s about, there’s always a certain level of heightened expectation to it because, for better, it’s not a studio-flick. Most of the times, these studio-flicks tend to be over-saturated and edited for the largest possible audience, so therefore, those movies tend to be a lot duller than your average indie-fare. However, every so often, you do happen to get the indie movie that, as much as you don’t want to admit it, is pretty dull.
Actually, a lot duller than mainstream-fare.
In the case of Ten Thousand Saints, this is especially true. While it’s easy for me to commend the movie on having such a nice heart and care in telling each of these character’s stories, it’s a shame that hardly any of them work out. Sometimes, this is due to the fact that no character is really ever allowed to break-out from their one-note, “type”-shell, but other times, this has to do with the fact that there’s just so much going on with each and everyone of these characters, it’s a little hard to keep track of what’s happening to whom, for what reasons, and how everybody else surrounding them is affected.
And this isn’t because I’m an idiotic dumbo that can’t pay attention to movies if they don’t feature some sort of car-chase or gun-shot; normally, these are my kinds of movies that I cherish for each and every second. But with Ten Thousand Saints, there’s just so many subplots that eventually, after about the fourth time or so of forgetting what was going on with them, I sort of gave up and just hoped that the movie’s good vibes would come and save the day.
That only happens with Ethan Hawke – which, to some, may not be all that surprising.
Hawke is the perfect choice as Les, because you get a huge sense that this guy means well, but he’s such a slacker, that he’ll never get his life in order to take care of those who need him the most. Having worked with Richard Linklater so much in the past definitely helps create this image of Hawke already as someone like Les, except in this case, it’s about thirty years down the line and needless to say, he hasn’t done much growing-up. But that doesn’t matter too much because it’s obvious this character has a good heart and is most definitely there to make sure those around him are happy, even if he does seem to bail at the most inopportune times.
But I’ll take that over the rest of these characters.
Basically, if you take that synopsis up above, add on two other subplots concerning Nicholson’s character’s own mid-life crisis and Emile Hirsch’s character punk band, then you’ve got a pretty hefty movie. It totally feels like during the driest moments, where the comedy doesn’t really stick, and the drama is so scattered among all of these stories, that the heart gets lost in the fray. That isn’t to say that I felt like co-writers and directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini didn’t care one bit for these characters, it’s more that it seems like they care so much, that they don’t forget that, sometimes, the best medicine for any screen-writer is to no what to cut and what to leave in.
There’s about two or three subplots that I could have done without here, but by saying that, I also realize that I’m down-grading a lot of the other performers here and that’s not right. For one, they all do seem to be trying here and also, they’re all really great in everything else they show up in, which makes this movie all the more surprising by its mediocrity. Butterfield has an odd American accent as a character who is a little too whiny for his own good; Steinfeld is fine at playing this raw, dirty and wild-type, but overall, here story turns into unabashed melodrama; Mortimer is sweet, but her character’s sort of forgotten about half-way through; same goes for Nicholson; and then, Emile Hirsch is here not really seeming like he’s trying.
Honestly, this is a big shock to me considering that just about each and everything these stars show up in, I love them in. The movies/shows themselves? Maybe not so much, but their own respective work has always felt nice and deserved, as if they should have gotten pats on the backs as soon as filming commenced. But sadly, that doesn’t seem to happen with Ten Thousand Saints, as they’re all just sort of left with conventional characters, nowhere to really stretch out their wings, and basically, service a script that doesn’t seem worth their time or effort.
And yet, they give it anyway. What entertainers these folks truly are!
Consensus: Despite the talent on-board, Ten Thousand Saints never rises above the sheer mediocrity it turns out to be with its over-stuffed, yet still uninteresting plot(s).
4 / 10
Photos Courtesy of: Indiewire
Dan the Man's Movie Reviews 
Just from that opening paragraph, that over-stuffed plot made my head hurt. I agree, I don’t just need vapid chase scenes and violence, I like a movie with a good strong plot, but that does sound like they took it too far in the heavy-plot direction!