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A huge and hugely talented cast is both the drawing card and the saving
grace of The United States of Leland, the latest from Kevin Spacey's Trigger
Street production house. Leland debuted at the 2003 Sundance festival,
which should give you some indication that something ain't right about it,
since we're talking about its release some 14 months later. Matthew Ryan
Hoge's debut isn't bad - it's actually quite entertaining - but in terms of
answering questions about the tragedy it portrays, Leland ranks right up
there with Elephant as being terrifically mute.
Until I settled into Hoge's unusual pace, Leland felt like the second night
of a two-part miniseries. It took me a while to figure out which characters
were connected to one another, as well as which portions were taking place
in present day and which were flashbacks. Once I had my bearings, though,
things got much more interesting.
Brooding Leland P. Fitzgerald (Ryan Gosling, Murder by Numbers), the son of
popular novelist Albert T. Fitzgerald (Spacey, The Life of David Gale),
stabbed to death the autistic younger brother (Michael Welch, Joan of
Arcadia) of Becky Pollard, the junkie who used to be his girlfriend (Jena
Malone, Cold Mountain). That's Leland's flashpoint, which affects just
about every character in the film. Leland lands in juvie. Becky's
bizarrely extended family suffers, obviously, but in less than obvious ways.
There's different suffering for Leland's mom (Lena Olin, Alias), but
basically there's a whole lot of suffering. All over the place. It gets
messy.
If the whole "floating grocery bag" part of American Beauty pissed you off,
then you'd better stay right the hell away from Leland, because it's filled
with the same kind of pretentious stuff, including a voiceover (Gosling)
that alternately made me want to laugh and break out in goosebumps. The
presence of Spacey doesn't help Leland feel like anything other than a weird
Beauty sequel, what with its damning portrayal of suburban life via murder
and flowery speeches delivered by a talented if not eerily similar-looking
cast.
Gosling is the heart of this film, offering him yet another meaty role that
lets him play off of the whole book-cover judgment thing (a la his Jewish
skinhead in The Believer). You've got to hand it to an actor whose
character commits a senseless murder yet is still able to remain as
sympathetic as Gosling's Leland does here. Hoge does well for a first
directorial effort, though I wished his script was as sharp as his eye.
Leland includes a glut of Frank Black music (both solo and with the Pixies),
as well as a couple of Jeremy Enigk numbers.
1:48 - R for language and some drug content
========== X-RAMR-ID: 37479 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1268388 X-RT-TitleID: 1130906 X-RT-SourceID: 595 X-RT-AuthorID: 1146 X-RT-RatingText: 7/10
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