Superb performances and a gripping retrospective plotline make this tough cookie an entertaining one, even if its adult story strand is weighed down with vagaries.

Given all the filmed memory pieces about screaming, violent Italian-American families in New York boroughs, I'm not especially thrilled by even a well-made example.

It positively crackles with energy, featuring startlingly raw performances from a cast that also includes Shia LaBeouf as the young Dito. And if it looks ragged around the edges, that's as it should be.

Dito Montiel adapts his autobiographical 2001 novel into a vivid slice-of-life drama from the Jim Carroll school of disaffected coming-of-age New York journalism.