`Fort Washington' Takes Homeless Plight Seriously

Movie review

XXX "The Saint of Fort Washington," with Matt Dillon, Danny Glover, Rick Aviles, Nina Siemaszko, Ving Rhames, Joe Seneca. Directed by Tim Hunter, from a script by Lyle Kessler. Newmark Cinemas. "R" - Restricted because of language, violence, subject matter. -------------------------------------------------------------------

Flaky bag ladies, unwashed crazies and creepy criminals populate most American movies that even address the subject of homelessness.

A new low may have been reached last summer with "Dennis the Menace," which featured Christopher Lloyd as a thieving vagrant - an expendable supporting character whose sole plot purpose was to frighten (and prejudice?) impressionable children.

Making amends?

Warner Bros. released that picture. Now the studio appears to be making amends with "The Saint of Fort Washington," a vivid, imperfect little movie that not only takes homeless people seriously, but makes two of them the central characters.

Matt Dillon plays the younger one, a possibly schizophrenic photographer whose wary, guarded manner seems to invite attacks. Danny Glover is his older, more experienced friend, a Vietnam veteran who once shared an American dream of suburban life but now dreams only of raising enough money to rent an apartment so he won't have to sleep in the streets.

They make a pact to stay together after a scary night at New York's Fort Washington Armory, a vast homeless shelter that feels more like a prison, complete with sadistic guards and knife-happy inmates.

Swearing that he won't go back there, Dillon learns to wash windshields at stoplights, find other places to sleep and save just enough money so he can share that apartment with Glover.

"The Saint of Fort Washington" was directed by Tim Hunter, who made the memorably edgy "River's Edge" and directed Dillon in one of the actor's best teen films, "Tex."

The script is the work of Lyle Kessler, who wrote the stage and film versions of the male-bonding drama "Orphans," which also dealt with the relationship between a protective older man and a sheltered, almost holy innocent.

Dillon does some of his finest, most intuitive work in the latter role. He's never seemed so desperate, or so believably soulful. You get a glimpse of the unworldly grace that Glover's character sees in him, partly because Glover makes his devotion to his friend seem quite purposeful and genuine.

Melodramatic turns

The script takes a few glib, melodramatic turns, especially when minor characters disrupt the narrative, and there's an unfortunate folkie tune near the end that drives home the message that we should all be ashamed that street people are treated like this.

But the movie certainly accomplishes what it sets out to do. The final scenes of look-alike coffins, filled with homeless outcasts and being shoved into a mass grave at Potter's field on Hart Island, are almost unbearably moving.

"The Saint of Fort Washington" has been dropped into the Newmark this weekend with little fanfare, and it will probably be gone in a week. That's a shame, but par for the course for a studio that threw away "Dogfight," one of the late River Phoenix's finest pictures. After several months of distribution limbo, at least it's finally here.