Movie Ratings That Actually Work    Become a Member

"One of the 50 Coolest Websites...they simply tell it like it is" - TIME

St. Vincent | 2014 | PG-13 | - 5.4.5

A newly single mom (Melissa McCarthy) and her preteen son (Jaeden Liebercher) move to a house in Brooklyn, and she has to work double shifts to support them. Desperate, she turns to an odd neighbor, a troubled Vietnam veteran (Bill Murray), to watch her son after school. The neighbor takes the boy to racetracks and strip joints with a pregnant stripper-prostitute (Naomi Watts). Also with Chris O'Dowd, Scott Adsit, Kimberly Quinn, Selenis Leyva, Donna Mitchell and Terrence Howard. Directed by Michael Ahern and Theodore Melfi. Several lines of dialogue are in Spanish with no subtitles. [1:43]

SEX/NUDITY 5 - A prostitute sits astride an older man's lap in bed, the man is covered by a quilt and wearing a T-shirt while she wears a leopard print bra that bares her shoulders, some cleavage and bare midriff; she says, "OK [anatomical term deleted], giddyap!" and bounces several times, making the bed bounce and squeak and the scene ends.
 A pregnant woman wears extremely short skirts and cutoff jeans that reveal bare legs; she dances around a pole in a strip club while wearing a bikini that reveals her belly as well as cleavage, thighs and legs. A woman wearing a revealing bikini that shows her cleavage, bare abdomen and legs to the upper thighs dances around a pole in a strip club. At a friends-and-family dinner, a new mother begins to lower one shoulder of her sleeveless blouse to nurse at the table and another woman covers her with a baby blanket, because two 12-year-old boys are sitting across from her. A few women reveal cleavage when wearing button down shirts with open necklines. A woman wears a man's shirt open to reveal part of her bra and a little cleavage. A woman wearing a short, dress bends away from the camera and we see her full bare thighs from the back and a slight amount of buttocks in panties; her lower legs are covered in knee-high boots. A photo of a dozen Vietnam-Era US soldiers shows them shirtless.
 A prostitute visits a senior citizen and when he cannot pay in full, shouts "My [scatological term deleted] is not free"; the man tells a neighbor boy the woman is a Lady of the Night, one of the most honest ways of making a living and the boy thinks that means she works a legal job at night. A prostitute tells an older man, "We don't bump the ugly parts no more; you are too old and I am too fat." A woman tells her adopted son's school principal that she was unable to have children during her marriage, because her Fallopian tubes recoiled from her cheating husband's sperm. A boy tells his mother that he knows that his dad cheated on her several times. A woman, crying, tells a school principal that her ex-husband had affairs with his assistant and her hair stylist.
 In a clinic room, a technician spreads gel on a pregnant woman's swollen abdomen and does an ultrasound of a baby we see on a screen. A woman in a hospital bed holds a newborn baby.

VIOLENCE/GORE 4 - After losing a large amount of money at the racetrack, a man's bookie appears at his home holding a large handgun and the bookie tells another man with him to beat the man until he is near death; the man in debt tells the attacker to go ahead and start, but then collapses to the floor.
 A man teaches a preteen boy nose-breaking skills and punching and the boy breaks a bully's nose at school after the bully bloodies the boy's nose in gym class (we see some blood as the bully groans in pain after the other boy charges him, screaming, "You [2 anatomical terms and one insulting name deleted]!" A smaller-than-average preteen boy suffers name-calling and pushing from his school's bully, resulting in a bloody nose in two scenes. A preteen boy slaps a bully in the face once and receives a hard punch to the nose (we see his bloody nose). An older man threatens a bully with a crow bar and tells him to go away; he breaks the bully's skateboard over his knee and throws it to the ground causing the bully and his friends to run away.
 An older man receives a phone message about "bad news" about his wife and he cries, leaning on his refrigerator and sliding down to his knees; he visits the assisted living facility and receives a banker's box containing her possessions and her ashes (we do not see the urn). An older man visits his disabled wife in her assisted living facility, where we see her in a wheelchair and hear that she suffers from dementia, is very thin and he can no longer afford the facility's fees; the man argues with the facility manager, who will not help him and he amasses gambling debts at racetracks in an effort to make some money while a loan shark hounds him for his unpaid debts.
 We see a CAT scan machine twice with men sliding inside it and the technician looks at a brain image and says the man had a stroke; we see a sequence showing a man having physical therapy sessions and another sequence shows him with speech problems, having speech therapy and slowly regaining the use of one side of his face and once out of the hospital he uses a cane for several scenes and then walks on his own. A preteen boy walks into his older neighbor's house and discovers the man lying unconscious on the floor and we then see the man in a CAT scan slide, ready for a scan.
 An older man hits his finger with a hammer as he breaks up ice cubes, falls in his kitchen and cuts himself (we see blood on the side of his face) and he wears a series of bandages over a cut on his forehead. An older man slams a whiskey glass onto a bar top and cuts his hand, showing a little blood and the bartender calls out, "You're bleeding all over the bar!" (the older man wears a bandage around his hand for several days). A man slams a water pitcher off his side table and gives a middle finger gesture to his therapist. A man drives through his white picket fence and mailbox, leaving them in pieces on the ground.
 A preteen boy says to a man, "I'm small, if you haven't noticed" and the man says, "Yeah, so was Hitler." An older man pays a preteen boy to use a power mower that is three times the boy's size to mow a yard of dirt, kicking up clouds of thick dust (the boy does wear eye protection).
 Two boys scrub toilets as punishment for fighting in school and we hear urination as one boy asks the other if he is taking a whiz; the other boy says he could not hold it (we see his head and shoulders). A man feeds a preteen boy large sardines on crackers with hot sauce and a glass of oyster juice (we see the unappetizing plate of food.
 A single mother experiences intense aggravation daily because of incidents caused by her poverty: her movers back into a tree that crushes the collectible wood-paneled convertible of a neighbor, her ex-husband threatens to take her son away from her and the boy is bullied at school, she has to work double shifts at a hospital without notice, her supervisor tells her abruptly that she cannot clock out and pick her son up at school, and she never has time to get completely unpacked in her new house. An angry Vietnam veteran lives in a tumbledown house in a working-class neighborhood; he is sloppy in appearance and wears T-shirts and baggy knee-length shorts, he is rude and insults everyone he meets with profanity and name-calling while his house is dirty and cluttered.

LANGUAGE 5 - About 2 F-words, 5 obscene hand gestures (4 of which occur all at once from boys in the windows of a school bus). 22 scatological terms, 20 anatomical terms, 11 mild obscenities, name-calling (stupid, dumb, freaks, bully, narc, evil witch, schmucks, blurry-eyes, spoke on a wheel, old guy, turd, pussy, coward, retard, tree hugger, runt, jerk, hooker, Chico and the Man, Strong Man, deadbeat mother), stereotypical references to men, women, single mothers, preteen boys, retirees, Vietnam veterans, exotic dancers, the Irish, Jews, Hispanics, Buddhists, Catholics, priests, loan sharks, divorce lawyers, 2 religious profanities (GD), 8 religious exclamations (Oh My God, God, Oh God, Amen, Take Me God, Jesus Christ, Thanks Be To God, In God We Trust).

SUBSTANCE USE - An older man steals prescription bottles from a drawer at a nurse's station in an assisted living facility and attempts to sell them on the street and when a friend discovers that they are only anti-epileptics and stool softeners she says, "You can't get high with these." An alcoholic man drinks alcohol in a number of scenes including glasses of whiskey and Coke in his house as well as in his front and back yards and in the local neighborhood tavern along with at a racetrack bar, a man drinks a plastic cup of beer in racetrack stands and dumps it out after a male friend drinks from it, a man takes a 12-year-old boy to a tavern where the boy drinks only Coke, a woman at home in two different scenes sips from a glass of wine in front of her preteen son, men and woman drink from bottles of beer in a tavern, a man has a plastic cup of beer in front of him at a racetrack, an older man argues with a bartender in two scenes about having another drink while slurring his words (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details), and a woman complains to a male neighbor about his taking her preteen son into a bar (the boy drank a Coke). An older man smokes cigarettes in many scenes inside and outside his home as well as in cars and outside a bar, a man carries an unlit cigarette in a hospital corridor, a man with a cigarette listens to the song "One Toke Over the Line" in his yard, a man in a car with a preteen boy empties the small change from the ashtray into the boy's hand (along with several cigarette butts), a boy finds cigarette butts in a man's window boxes, a man smokes a cigarette butt that he hid in a planter then snuffs it out and lights a fresh cigarette after coming home from the hospital.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Divorce, single parents, Vietnam veterans, illness, poverty, addictions, Alzheimer's disease, death, responsibility, sacrifice, compassion, redemption.

MESSAGE - Everyday saints live in every neighborhood.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


how to
support us

PLEASE DONATE

We are a totally independent website with no connections to political, religious or other groups & we neither solicit nor choose advertisers. You can help us keep our independence with a donation.

NO MORE ADS!

Become a member of our premium site for just $1/month & access advance reviews, without any ads, not a single one, ever. And you will be helping support our website & our efforts.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

We welcome suggestions & criticisms -- and we accept compliments too. While we read all emails & try to reply we don't always manage to do so; be assured that we will not share your e-mail address.

how to
support us

PLEASE DONATE

We are a totally independent website with no connections to political, religious or other groups & we neither solicit nor choose advertisers. You can help us keep our independence with a donation.

NO MORE ADS!

Become a member of our premium site for just $2/month & access advance reviews, without any ads, not a single one, ever. And you will be helping support our website & our efforts.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

We welcome suggestions & criticisms -- and we will accept compliments too. While we read all emails & try to reply we do not always manage to do so; be assured that we will not share your e-mail address.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Subscribe to our newsletter

Know when new reviews are published
We will never sell or share your email address with anybody and you can unsubscribe at any time

You're all set! Please check your email for confirmation.

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This