Jude is a teenage boy who is trying to reconnect with his father Les in 1987 Manhattan. When Jude's friend, Teddy, dies of a drug overdose, Jude finds himself befriending a group of friends who are against drugs, alcohol, profanity and sex and live for punk-style rock music. When he meets Eliza, who is sixteen years old and is pregnant with Teddy's child, he and Les are forced to be her rock as she struggles through her pregnancy and early motherhood while Jude struggles with his feelings for her and his relationship with his father.
The film shows all the earmarks of a story too heavily compressed; the complications among the entwined families pile up after a while, and the period milieu feels arbitrary.
For a movie with extremely loud punk-rock music at its core, "Ten Thousand Saints" is a pleasantly low-key experience; it's a small-scale character drama about learning to live with loss.
Ethan Hawke is so funny in Ten Thousand Saints that he nearly keeps the movie afloat.
Los Angeles Times
August 13, 2015
"Ten Thousand Saints" pulsates with full-blooded supporting characters who create a tragic-absurd tapestry of decay and rebellion in the Ronald Reagan years, from depressed New England to volatile New York. It's too bad the center cannot hold.
The cinematography by Ben Kutchins works more from grime than grim, capturing a battered backdrop for the characters rather than a cartoon battlefield of drugs and crime/
The emotionally uneven film is more intriguing in parts than as a whole, with the periphery characters often more compelling than the somewhat passive protagonist.