The United States of Leland poster & wallpaper

Don Cheadle, Ryan Gosling, Kevin Spacey

"The United States of Leland" tells the story of a young man's experience in a juvenile detention center that touches on the tumultuous changes that befall his family and the community in which he liv...( read more  read more... )es.

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85% liked it

26,316 ratings

Critics

33% liked it

86 critics

R, 104 min.

Directed by: Matthew Ryan Hoge

Release Date: April 2, 2004

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DVD Release Date: September 7, 2004

Stats: 1,461 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (1,461)

  • dreamfaeries
    October 17, 2009
    dreamfaeries
    Interesting movie. Sometimes hard to keep my attention on it, but it was alright.
  • susanriley
    June 7, 2009
    susanriley
    Great cast and acting. Particularly enjoyed the existentialist overtones, a rare treat in a Hollywood pic.
  • StaisilD
    August 11, 2008
    StaisilD
    Leland: "And that's when I figured out that tears couldn't make somebody who was dead alive again. There's another thing to learn about tears, they can't make somebody who doesn't love you any more love you again. It's the same with prayers. I wonder how much of their lives peopl...( read more)e waste crying and praying to God. If you ask me, the devil makes more sense than God does. I can at least see why people would want him around. It's good to have somebody to blame for the bad stuff they do. Maybe God's there because people get scared of all the bad stuff they do. They figure that God and the Devil are always playing this game of tug-of-war game with them. And they never know which side they're gonna wind up on. I guess that tug-of-war idea explains how sometimes, even when people try to do something good, it still turns out bad."


    Ryan Gosling plays Leland P. Fitzgerald, a 16-year-old boy who, as the film begins, has stabbed a retarded boy to death. From there the film, smartly written and directed by Matthew Ryan Hoge, unfolds on two timelines, one showing the aftermath of the murder, the other showing the events preceding it. Gosling excels at playing isolated young men, and his work as Leland is fantastic, imbuing him with sadness and a slight dopiness that is endearing. Hoge's story certainly doesn't come together like a puzzle. The missing pieces never entirely materialize, and the fragments never collect into a complete picture. Perhaps most damaging, despite a solid performance by Ryan Gosling, is that Leland's blankness and intellectualization never turns into a believable character. Don Cheadle has an intensity and charisma that bigger stars should envy, and Kevin Spacey plays the self-proclaimed asshole father with a sharpness that stings. But the rest of the supporting characters aren't developed enough to make much of an impression, particularly the victim.
  • FangsFirst
    June 7, 2008
    FangsFirst
    After 2001's The Believer, I took a strong interest in Ryan Gosling. I can no longer remember how I stumbled on that movie, but I definitely showed it around and have a poster I took about to be discarded from a rental place at the time, which still resides on my wall (lea...( read more)ding to fears that it will be misinterpreted, in light of its imagery and my rather Aryan appearance). Gosling really seemed to take off in the great public conscious after The Notebook, though, which I've never seen, but this, too, predated that--possibly the reason it was lost, it seems to the majority. When I first saw the packaging for this film, it was instantly intriguing--Gosling accompanied by Jena Malone, Kevin Spacey and Don Cheadle? Really? Sign me up. Eventually. Eventually, though, is now.

    Leland P. Fitzgerald (Gosling) is a 16 year old who has just been arrested for the murder of Ryan Pollard (Michael Welch), the "retarded kid" who happens to be the younger brother of his girlfriend Becky (Malone). In juvenile detention, he catches the eye of aspiring writer ("You're not a writer unless people are reading your shit") Pearl Madison (Cheadle), who smells a book--as well as a kid who doesn't seem to belong with the rest, who are all more open and almost proud of their crimes in his "Special Handling" class--the class that stays locked up because their crimes were too heinous to let them run free or have outdoor exercise. Leland's father Albert (Spacey) is relatively estranged, an accomplished writer with a reputation as an asshole, who discovers his son was arrested from the front of a newspaper. Also affected by this crime are Becky's older sister Julie (Michelle Williams) and her boyfriend Allen Harris (Chris Klein), and their parents Harry (Martin Donovan--who for some reason my brain was screaming, "This guy is usually a sleaze!" about upon sight--though I can't find the credit that gave me this impression) and Karen (Ann Magnuson).

    This is a rather ballsy movie--it is looking at the strange way humans deal with problems, horrible occurrences, the actions of others and their own less-than-pleasant actions in retrospect. It pokes at the low-level excuses like "I made a mistake" or "I'm only human." Around Leland we see others doing less obvious, blatantly harmful things--Becky takes refuge from the world in a controlling drug-dealer of an older guy who has her hooked on (presumably, at least) heroin, Pearl sleeps around on his distant girlfriend, Albert wrestles a bit with his choices as a father and so on. Most of them refer to these things as "mistakes" or happenstance regarding their being "human." Luckily, none seem melodramatic--even Becky's drug use (wow, heroin?!) is carried off in a believable way. Strangely, in all of this it is somehow Leland who seems to be most honest. Pearl struck me as a selfish, egocentric, self-excusing jerk--as did most of the characters. Only Leland seemed interested in others as well as himself--but it was eventually shown to illustrate the way people in general are. Pearl is not far off from most people, nor are the rest--their actions may be exaggerated in a way for effect (Pearl's arguments for his affair, for instance) but they are not too far off from actual events in the world that occur daily and are cast off as meaningless, when they are far from it. Leland, alone, though, examines how the actions of others are based in their feelings as fellow human beings--when Becky leaves him for her drug-dealer, he says he doesn't blame her--some may say that he is an unreliable narrator, but I've always loathed that term. As has been noted--most recently in my experience by, of all people, Pink Floyd's Roger Waters--memory is inherently coloured and unreliable. There's a certain arrogance in claiming, I've found, to know the exact circumstances of an event; everyone always seems to have a conflicting interpretation, and for one to claim theirs is more accurate, are they somehow a higher level of being than this other human? So I take faith in Leland meaning it when he says he doesn't blame Becky. He doesn't take vengeance on her, or any vengeance at all. When we finally get a glimpse of his motivation, it is thoroughly misguided but purely intentioned--and aren't most things? But he will admit that he did wrong--he does say that he made a mistake, but he does not just call it a mistake and try to move on. He stabs himself to see what it feels like, and this seems to be part of his realization--he seems a little out of touch with the basics of the world like this sometimes.

    It's a very fascinating look, but it's worth noting that Matthew Ryan Hoge occasionally seems to fail to get his writing and direction to congeal--bits and pieces seem incongruously wordy, like the first scene with Allen and Julie, where the affection of their relationship seems like a cheap romance of sorts (not a bodice-ripping one, a fantasized fairytale kind), or occasionally Cheadle can't quite get the excess of words he spills on the phone to his girlfriend to sound quite like an actual conversation, and they end up more like a monologue. I think the blame for this does not lie with Cheadle, though. It's a mouthful of words, and his performance is excellent--like all of them even Klein, who strikes fear into the heart of my sense of taste, having been in two American Pie movies. They all put these excesses of words into place as best they can and usually conceal the pretentiousness of some of the comments with their skill, it just occasionally ends up too much for believability to bear. Still, Hoge does an amazing job of managing to make all of the characters sympathetic in some respect, and of helping us to understand both their motivations and see this understanding as a way of realizing our own faulty justifications and excuses.

    Damn, though, this movie was depressing. I had to just go to sleep after watching it when I couldn't find the right person to talk to about it.
  • MovieGeek13
    March 31, 2008
    MovieGeek13
    The movie doesn't even realize how serious the situation is. It just exploits it to depict some cheap, unrealistic, pretentious notion of what the filmmakers think teen angst is.
  • theloneowl
    November 6, 2009
    theloneowl
    Forse l'unico film con Ryan Gosling a non essermi proprio piaciuto.
  • krishna119
    October 27, 2009
    krishna119
    I liked Ryan Gosling in The notebook. It's amazing how a young man in one movie appears a boy in the other, released around the same time. The movie was a bit draggy.. 2 stars
  • MondoJay
    September 8, 2009
    MondoJay
    Much better then I had anticipated, great cast and Ryan Gosling is brilliant as usual. The ending was a little drawn out though, and lost the necessary punch that it could have had. Still, good film overall.
  • banzaibrother
    August 12, 2009
    banzaibrother
    I'm a huge Kevin Spacey fan and I like Don Cheadle. But this is Ryan Gosling's movie.
  • thezwoman
    July 22, 2009
    thezwoman
    I'm giving it three stars just for the cast and Gosling's acting. Nothing else other than that.

View All The United States of Leland Reviews

Critic Reviews

April 9, 2004
Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail

It's neither an insightful nor well-made film. full review

April 9, 2004
Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times

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

April 8, 2004
Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer

The strengths of Leland ... come from its performances. full review

April 2, 2004
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

A moral muddle. full review

April 1, 2004
A.O. Scott, The New York Times

In spite of an exceptionally fine cast, this melodrama of suburban adolescent dysfunction never rises to the level of its literary ambitions. full review

View more The United States of Leland reviews at RottenTomatoes.com

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The United States of Leland Trivia

  • What movie stars Ryan Gosling, Chris Klein, Don Cheadle, and Kevin Spacey?  Answer »
  • You want a why. Well, maybe there isn't one. Maybe... Maybe this is just something that happened.   Answer »
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