Mark Reviews Movies: THERE ARE NO SAINTS

There Are No Saints, Paramount Pictures and Saban Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 26, 2022

In theory, Paul Schrader's particular touch is at the core of the cold, bleak story of There Are No Saints. It opens with our protagonist apparently in the process of beating and ultimately murdering a woman. The scene is depicted using suggestive imagery surrounding the attack, before the image freezes just before one moment of violence. From what we see, what is happening here looks to be obvious, but maybe it's not that simple.

The man was tried and convicted of murder, but at the start of this plot, he is released from prison. Years later, a police detective offered a deathbed confession that he had planted evidence. Legally, the alleged killer, named Neto (José María Yazpik) and nicknamed "the Jesuit," is innocent, so maybe our assumptions from that prologue are inaccurate. The title, the main character's assertions, and his actions point at something entirely different in reality.

From that point, this story, written by Schrader but directed by Alfonso Pineda Ulloa, begins as a redemption tale, with Neto trying to put behind his criminal ways and to reconcile with his ex-wife Nadia (Paz Vega), hoping to become part of the life of his young son Julio (Keidrich Sellati). Then again, the son also looks up to his father, sketching assorted depictions of him with a lot of religious iconography, in a way that gives Neto pause.

Nadia tells her ex that Julio does see his father as a kind of saint, and Neto wants to make sure the son knows better than that. He is not a good man, whether or not he murdered that woman from the opening scene, but maybe he could be a better one.

All of this setup—the focus on guilt and the desire for some just-out-of-reach redemption—is the usual stuff of Schrader. Somewhere along the way of the writing or the making of this movie, though, those foundational ideas have shifted, not just into the backdrop, but simply out of the picture entirely.

Yes, Neto doesn't want to be the man he once was, turning down an offer to re-join a gang of which he was a part and going back to church for a bit of a priestly pep talk, but Nadia is now dating Vincent (Neal McDonough), who says he is and on paper is involved in real estate. When we first meet the new boyfriend, though, he's overseeing a man being beaten in an abandoned warehouse.

The guy is bad news, and whether Naida knows and ignores or is oblivious to Vincent's actual business and practices is even more irrelevant than the character in the movie's mind. She and Neto have sex in her car, and upon finding out somehow, Vincent and his goons kill her and abduct Julio. Neto has to abandon his search for redemption in order to take on a mission of both revenge and rescue.

From there, the plot has Neto going from Vincent's henchmen to his business associates, looking for information about the villain's whereabouts. Along the way, he's attacked by various gangs—in a parking lot, where he does an impractically ridiculous amount of damage with a shotgun, and the bathroom of a strip club, where nobody hears the multiple gunshots—and threatens, tortures, and/or kills anyone who doesn't give up information or gets in his way.

The plotting here is so simplistic that it comes as a bit of a surprise how much of the intriguing early material is scrapped (Tim Roth plays Neto's attorney, who probably knows the truth about his client's actions but makes a sudden exit when the story's goals change), how many corners are cut to keep Neto moving, and how clumsily the thread from that opening scene is re-introduced. Ron Perlman plays a man who definitely knows what Neto did, as well as how much more he did, during that opening scene.

Then, there's matter of Shannyn Sossamon's Inez, a bartender at the strip club, whom Neto hires to accompany him to Mexico. She somehow becomes so emotionally involved with the guy in a short period of time that she constantly and eagerly puts herself at risk for him. None of that makes much sense, and there are times that Ulloa seems to be editing around an entirely different original path for her character (a scene of her being forced into a cab with some added dialogue on the soundtrack, for example), which only adds to the confusion.

The basic schematic of the plot is so routine and hollow that There Are No Saints doesn't earn the impact of its real shocks, especially its demoralizing climax. With the movie's final note, the filmmakers show they really don't care about the consequences of anything that has happened, either.

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