The United States Of Leland

[MacGuffin]

Trailer here.

Release Date: April 2nd, 2004 (LA/NY); expands to other cities at later dates

Cast: Ryan Gosling (Leland Fitzgerald), Don Cheadle (Pearl Madison), Martin Donovan, Sherilyn Fenn, Chris Klein (Allan Hughes), Ann Magnuson, Jena Malone (Becky Pollard), Lena Olin (Marybeth Fitzgerald), Kevin Spacey, Michelle Williams (Jennifer Pollard), Maria Arce (Bethany), Randall Bosley (Sheriff Donaldson), Nick Kokich (Kevin), Alec Medlock (Young Leland), Jason Peck, Sheeri Rappaport, Yolonda Ross (Miranda), Kerry Washington, Michael Welch

Screenwriter/Director: Matthew Ryan Hoge (debut)

Premise: This is the story of a sensitive teenager, Leland (Gosling), faced with issues of morality and hope under difficult circumstances, who is arrested and sent to juvenile hall, after he kills an autistic child out of sympathy (sort of like an emotional euthanasia). Once there, he meets a teacher, Mr. Pearl (Cheadle), who helps him figure out the reasons for why he committed the crime, as we also see the ramifications of the murder have on his community, his family, and that of the victim.

A letter from the writer/director here.

[Pubrick]

here's hoping spacey doesn't ruin this with his curse.

[SoNowThen]

so what's the eta on the upcoming huge mercy killing debate?

[cine]

A letter from the writer/director here.

He forgot to apologize for CASTING CHRIS KLEIN.

Also when I saw the title, I immediately thought of:

[Pedro]

jena malone's hot.

oh yeah, that trailer is terrible.

[NEON MERCURY]

...sherilyn fenn........

[Pubrick]

give a shit about a trailer/erect-penis-of-devil..  

jena malone + michelle williams = my money.

[Just Withnail]

Why wasn't anyone acting in that trailer?

[bonanzataz]

...sherilyn fenn........

yeah, when i read the title, i thought of leland palmer, and then, out of nowhere, there's sherilyn. director must've been a big twin peaks fan.

[El Duderino]

i think the movie looks pretty decent and hopefully spacey doesnt bring it down. i am a don cheadle and ryan gosling fan though. i'll end up seeing it. michelle williams and jena malone are nice cherries on top.

[SiliasRuby]

The United States of Leland Review
Source:Chud.com
4.02.04
By Devin Faraci

A young retarded boy lies stabbed to death in a sunny suburban park. This is how The United States of Leland opens – you know you're not in for a laugh fest. The rest of the film is about a lot of things, but mostly about why – why things got this screwed up, why someone would do such a thing, why we keep on hurting the people around us and ourselves.

The identity of the murderer isn't a mystery, only his motivations. The killer is a high school kid named Leland Fitzgerald, the son of a famous author. The retarded boy is the brother of Leland's girlfriend, a troubled daughter of a local family. Leland is sent to juvie hall pending his trial, and while he is there he meets Pearl, a jaded teacher who aspires to be a writer. He sees in Leland the perfect makings of a book, and he calls in favors and breaks the rules to get time alone with the young murderer, trying to figure out what it was inside this smart, attractive boy could lead him to such a crime.

If that was all that the movie offered I would have liked it a lot more. But writer/director Ryan Hoge fills his American debut with subplots that pull you away from the more interesting core story. It turns out that Leland's girlfriend is a drug addict. Her sister is getting ready to go to college and break up with her boyfriend, who happens to live with the family. Then there's Leland's dad, a complete asshole, his mom, a cipher, and the dead boy's parents, two more ciphers who just exist to eat up screen time.

The core story is strong. Don Cheadle plays Pearl, and his scenes with Ryan Gosling as Leland are great. They never slip into the boring mentor/student trap, and even though Pearl learns valuable lessons from the boy (as he must, it's almost like this sort of thing is in the contract when you make a movie), their time together never becomes icky. The set-up is familiar: while Pearl thinks he will be the one asking questions it turns out that the questions Leland has been pondering about life make the teacher re-evaluate his own choices.

What's great about Pearl is that he's a bastard. Cliché would have had the jaded teacher/frustrated writer a drinker, but someone with potential. Pearl's a drinker, but he manages to be worse than expected – he cheats on his girlfriend, he lies to Leland's dad, he blatantly uses the boy for his own ends. It's nice to see the character get some depth, and not least of all because he's black. The usual Hollywood wisdom would be to have a black character be wounded yet noble. Pearl (for most of the movie – the film really falls apart right at the end, and Pearl's character is betrayed) is a wounded and not all that noble guy. He knows he's doing the wrong thing, he knows that he's hurting everyone around him. Cheadle underplays him, and he's great to watch. One of the best actors of his generation, Cheadle hasn't really had the break out role he deserves. CHUD readers probably know him well enough at this point, but most of the world doesn't. It's a shame – a friend of mine once said that they should have a Best Performance by Don Cheadle award at the Oscars every year, and it's hard for me to argue that.

Cheadle is blown out of the water by Ryan Gosling, though. Best known for his portrayal of a Jewish neo-Nazi in Believer, Gosling looks uncannily like a young Christian Bale – specifically as Patrick Bateman – in this film. His character is a sixteen year old kid with the kind of thoughts that send seasoned philosophers out their window, and he pulls it off beautifully. He plays young well – it's harder than you might think. He has the slouch and the reluctance of a kid just coming into his own, but he also has the thousand yard stare of someone with a truly fucked up secret to keep. He juggles his character's different sides with grace and conviction.

Kevin Spacey is Leland's dad, the self centered asshole who happens to be one of the finest novelists of his time. Mr. Spacey, I would like to welcome you back to serious acting after a long stint in the Hallmark Hall of Fame wilderness. The cold asshole is sort of a Spacey stock character at this point, a role he perfected, copyrighted and marked with his own urine in Swimming With Sharks, but he's fresh here. Maybe it's the chance to play a character who doesn't have to struggle against adversity while reaffirming our faith in the human spirit that frees him up.

The rest of the cast is good enough – Jenna Malone as the young addict especially has a powerful scene where she more than holds her own. The problem is that every single one of them is extraneous to the story that we care about. Especially Chris Klein.

Oh, Chris Klein. Whoever cast Klein in this movie needs to take a serious look at their decision making process. Were they hitting the bottle that week? Casting Klein in this film is like casting a chimp in an otherwise straight version of Hamlet. He's terrible. Awful. As an actor he's so stiff you want to hold a mirror under his nose to see if it fogs up. His character seems to be completely outside of the plot, which makes his every appearance doubly annoying. Until the end, when the purpose of his character in the plot is revealed and you just want to scream. As I mentioned, the film really falls to pieces right at the end, and Klein's a huge part of that. What a goddamned disaster he is.

The United States of Leland is little over one half of a good - if overwritten (oh, wicked voice over!) movie. If Hoge, who once worked at a juvenile corrections facility, had kept his story focused on the title character, the film would have been tons better. I guess it's sort of indie and gritty and real to have every character have a screwed up life (a teenaged addict in suburbia! How shocking!), but it's overkill. There are two other films mashed up with the good, Leland and Pearl one, and they're both Lifetime films.

6.3 out of 10

[cine]

6.3 out of 10

Any review that ends in a final rating such as this doesn't belong on Xixax. One man's opinion, perhaps.

[pete]

looks lame and the director's letter didn't help.

[Pas]

The United States of Ghey

omg omg !

[Finn]

I was really moved by this film. It doesn't have a clean cut answer to it's flawed characters and it's more complicated than that. It got a lot of bad buzz from the critics, but I thought it was very thoughtful, intellegent, deep and moving.