Despite the poor box office returns, The Saint of Fort Washington received positive reviews from critics, with many praising the performances of Dillon and Glover.
Synopsis
Matthew is a young man with a good heart but suffers from sporadic schizophrenic tendencies. He ends up with nowhere to live after a slumlord tears down his tenement. Matthew is forced to reside at Fort Washington Armory, a nearby shelter. Bullied by punks, he turns to a homeless military veteran, Jerry, for help on how to survive. Together they form a friendship that changes both of their lives forever.
The movie opened at #22, making $19,409. It made a total American gross of $134,454 in its limited release.[2]
Critical reception
The Saint of Fort Washington holds an 80% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 10 reviews.[5]
Roger Ebert gave the movie 3 out of 4 stars, praising Glover and Dillon’s acting. He wrote, "Glover and Dillon make characters who seem comfortable with each other; it is easier to fight the world together. Both actors resist any temptation to reach for pathos in their roles. The Glover character, angered at being cheated out of a small business, has great fury at the world, but has learned mostly to control it; he needs someone to care for, and comes to love the younger man almost as a son. And Dillon, saddled with sainthood in the film's title, plays against sentimentality most of the time."[6]Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader wrote, "This isn’t a perfect movie, and it may occasionally err on the side of Dickensian sentiment, but I it has so much to say about the world we live in and says it with such grace, wit, and raw feeling that I recommend it without qualification."[7]
Janet Maslin of The New York Times was similarly positive, writing "The film's visual backdrop often supplies what its dialogue lacks, as Mr. Hunter -- and the cinematographer Frederick Elmes, creating vivid urban landcapes -- convey a strong sense of the characters' restrictive domain", and concluded the film "works best when it avoids even a hint of the metaphorical and sticks to the plain, hard facts."[8]
Critiques of the film noted that the "particulars of playwright Lyle Kessler’s script often seem phony, contrived and far too politely worked out for the harshness of the conditions on display", and that "drugs, alcohol and crime are never mentioned, and filmmakers offer no clues as to how they think society should regard and, in turn, deal with the homeless in any way other than is now the case."[9] Ebert commented, "The film's flaw, I think, is to spend too much time with the melodrama surrounding the bully of the Fort Washington Shelter."[6] Peter Rainer of the Los Angeles Times opined the screenplay’s "deification" of its characters was unnecessary and that "the filmmakers are so intent on creating a fable that the more realistic aspects of the story lose some of their bite."[10]
