The United States of Leland Reviews
An intriguing movie about how badly we really want to know the unknowable, what makes kids kill other kids.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Houston Chronicle
Top CriticA sidetracking subplot about Madison's adulterous fling with a co-worker goes nowhere; it is one of several unsatisfying, tertiary plot strands.
Full Review
| Original Score: C+
The entire film is like that -- moments of good actors giving halfhearted performances.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Isn't it sad that a boy like this could feel so lost that he had to kill someone? Well, maybe. But isn't it sadder that someone's dead?
Arizona Republic
Top Critic
[Hoge] spends an awful lot of time trying to get us to understand Leland and almost none trying to get us to understand his victim.
Besides being puffed up with its importance, it's also inert and totally implausible -- one of those movies where nobody behaves in a way that seems remotely human.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
It's ponderous and endless, and raised only two question in my mind: How many times can Kevin Spacey rehash the same performance? And is death the ultimate deadpan?
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
It simply mopes along to one of those joyless alt-rock soundtracks that have thankfully started to fall out of fashion since the film was produced, leaving vague unpleasantness in its wake.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
A thoughtful, mature, daring work that looks beneath the surface of an awful act and asks questions few would ask.
| Original Score: B+
The performances range from solid to excellent (Mr. Gosling and Mr. Donovan are among the standouts), and the ubiquitous teen angst is handled with a minimum of condescension.
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
Leland is nothing if not well meant and sincere. Unfortunately, it's also pretentious, overwritten, derivative.
| Original Score: 1.5/4
The strengths of Leland ... come from its performances.
| Original Score: 2.5/4
A compelling, exquisitely acted drama about the shock waves emanating from -- and toward -- a single act of almost inexplicable violence.
There's something secondhand about everything here. Hoge seems to be mimicking the tone and fabric of other, better indie movies.
Kevin Spacey has only a supporting role in The United States of Leland, but this troubled-youth melodrama -- which he produced -- is very much of a piece with the phony, pretentious and preachy flicks Spacey has starred in of late.
| Original Score: 1/4
There's a reason filmmaking is considered a craft, and Hoge, a former teacher in a juvenile prison, cannot pull off what would be a tricky proposition for a skilled veteran.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
In spite of an exceptionally fine cast, this melodrama of suburban adolescent dysfunction never rises to the level of its literary ambitions.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/5
An ambitious and intelligent film probing that chronic contemporary phenomenon, the seemingly senseless crime, but it is ultimately unsatisfying for all its efforts and various pluses.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Among its weaknesses are an overpopulated cast and a disposable victim.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Yet another joylessly trendy indie portrait of the dark side of suburbia.
Full Review
| Original Score: D
The movie's idiotic fascination with the senselessness of its central act is scarily close to a fetish.
A complex and often compelling melodrama, at times almost verging on soap opera.
As maudlin and monotone as the whiny alt-rock that drenches its overly articulated emotional disclosures.
