A successful writer living in Los Angeles, Dito (Robert Downey Jr.) is summoned home to Astoria after a 15-year absence by his mother (Dianne Wiest) when his father (Chazz Palminteri) becomes seriously ill.

His father never forgave Dito for leaving home and thus the two have a very strained relationship. Memories of his youth come flooding back as Dito (played as a teenager by Shia LaBeouf) revisits the old neighborhood, encountering the few childhood friends (the "saints" of the film and memoir's title) who aren't in prison or dead.

As Dito finds himself whisked back into the childhood events that shaped him, we meet an unforgettable cast of characters living in the thick of a sweltering 1986 Queens summer.