You won't be disappointed!

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Though this is supposed to be an "indie", the producers must have been very well connected to get such A list talent to work on a C list movie. It is one of those movies based on a trope that the public loves: teens doing horrific stuff. Are they evil, is our society to blame for making such nice boys into monsters? It just draws us in, along with the alleged narcissism of the title, which was plain stupid.Leland kills a retarded kid, the brother of his erstwhile junkie girl friend and her phony "picture perfect" white suburban family. He is a smart, seemingly pleasant guy full of all sorts of insights that his rude self centered neglectful novelist Kevin Spacey dad gave him. The writer mucks out of the moral angle of this by conveniently having the titular character mentally "black out" at the time of the murder, even though he wasn't a druggie.I compare this to the River's Edge. While that movie was clumsy and had some hammy acting and bad plot elements, it connected with me and many of my time because it showed the dark side of drugs, out of control teens etc in suburbia. Nor did they try to sugar coat the killer, he was a pig. But he was "saved" by an older, hipper killer. But the old one leg biker killer was morally superior to his younger protégé because he at least loved his girlfriend that he shot dead for no real reason. US of L was superior to that movie on a technical and acting level but it was kind of cheap and exploitative. Ryan Gosling is a good actor but his puppy dog man-boy act involved spouting all sorts of random insights about the human condition. His character just didn't connect too well.There was no resolution, no real catharsis. The ending was all pat and cheap. For instance: wasn't Pearl, the wise caring black guy stock character, responsible because he neglected his duties?

We find ourselves with Ryan Gosling in one of his first roles in this pseudo intellectual movie where even the cast, though rather solid on paper, is completely under-exploited and can't even manage to save the day.The scenario is little inspired, its structure is weak and very linear and boils down to a succession of tirades and other philosophical reflections that are tiring because they're not part of interesting dynamic. At the end of the movie, you don't seem to have grasped the motivations of this teenager though Matthew Hoge based the story on that, which proves he missed the boat.And what about this photography so ugly it seems you're watching an old TV movie from the 90's even though it was released in 2003 ! No, there is really nothing to save from the disaster that is The United States of Leland.

Disclaimer:After reading many positive reviews, I noticed that many people really liked this movie. I might not have liked it as much because I saw it in German, and missed some of the intricacies of the dialog. (Because I am a native English speaker.) But that being the case, this review reflects what I think about this movie.Great movies can be divided up into two categories, potentially. The first are encouraging movies. They might encourage us to do is to realize our true potential, like The Return of the King, with Aragorn becoming what he was meant to be. Other great movies have themes which could give us some kind of hope, to laugh in face of adversity, or to see something from another perspective. Great movies like these, such as It's a Wonderful Life, speak out about the value of life and of every individual, ring true in everyone's hearts. These are the movies which help us to face life. And then the second class of great or good movies, are ones that may not be so profound, but distract us from the seeming futility of our lives, without perhaps such a deep theme, but with a lot of entertainment value. Movies like James Bond, which for a couple of hours, spirit us away into a fantasy world of superwomen, super-cars, super-spies, and super villains. Die Hard is another one like this. This is commonly classified as escapism. But this movie is neither escapist nor encouraging. It is also not a thriller, in the true sense. Rather it seeks so replace hope with despair, causing us to focus upon the pointlessness of life, and give excuses for someone taking the role of God. These kinds of seed thoughts could encourage murder, if dwelled upon, and taken to their logical conclusion; it leads us to think that pity is sufficient grounds for murder, and that we should admire someone who murders when they did it because they felt sorry for someone. Of course this sounds sick, and it should. But this is honestly what the movie portrayed. And the fact that it is not portrayed with a cold cynicism is what makes it the scariest. It is not the only one of its kind, but the moral vacuum in which the movie is played is the same as a horror movie, but with less blood. Basically, the word justice is put into the furthest corner, away from view, and the word Despair, Pointlessness, Meaninglessness, Lostness, Fear, Doom, and Disappointment are projected in the front, making the question we are supposed to ask painfully clear, "What is wrong with doing something wrong if I feel that it is right? And if I feel that it is right, doesn't the pointless nature of life make that which I feel right, ruling out all sense of right and wrong?" In other words, "Because life has no meaning either way, does it matter really what I do, as long as it has a meaning to me?" The obvious counter to this reasoning is also shown in the movie. The pain which going with my urges may inflict others is made apparent in the parallel story of Pearl and his girlfriend, as though it were not clear enough in the grief of the victim's family. Perhaps this element was kept intact, in order not to downplay the consequences of the murder too much. But this thought that my actions actually do have a meaning, and that there is a right and wrong, despite of my feelings or urges does not seem to be the dominant theme of the movie. If one does not think too much about it, one is left with a pretty neutral attitude towards murder, thinking that maybe he even did the "right thing."If nothing else, the movie allows people to reflect upon the impulsive nature of crimes, with misguided motives, combined later with the horrible pain that they can cause others, as well as the guilt for those who commit them. But I had to really think about it to come with this conclusion. It might have been just a depressing movie about a boy who murdered his neighbor because he was so stinking depressed himself that it just didn't matter. And that is pretty disgusting.

"After seemingly ordinary 15-year-old Leland (Ryan Gosling) stuns his quiet suburban community with a chilling crime, he is sent to juvenile hall where he meets Pearl (Don Cheadle), a teacher and aspiring write who dreams of making Leland's compelling story into a book. As Pearl digs deeper into Leland's life and the people caught up in it - his mother (Lena Olin), his famous writer-father (Kevin Spacey), and his troubled girlfriend (Jena Malone) - he uncovers Leland's disturbing motive. The tables soon turn when the enigmatic teen forces Pearl to examine his own morally questionable behavior. Climaxing with a shocking collision of violence, understanding, and hope, Leland will take you to states you never imagined," according to the DVD sleeve description.It starts off with the lead character, Mr. Gosling hazily recalling one of the film's crimes - the killing of "retarded" Michael Welch (as Ryan Pollard), the little brother of his junkie girlfriend Jena Malone (as Becky "Beck" Pollard). Gosling doesn't quite remember committing the crime, although no real sense of mystery abounds. "Sometimes the most important stuff goes away," Gosling explains. In any case, you're correct in suspecting cagey Chris Klein (as Allen Harris) is somehow involved. Apparently, the motive is a combination of mercifully ending sadness and parental neglect. The film is most interesting in drawing parallels between the characters played by Gosling and Mr. Klein, two young men finding love and sex with surrogate families.Both Gosling and Klein are clearly too old for their roles; Gosling is supposed to be 15, and Klein calls a 20-year-old drug dealer an "older guy" (in a brief scene, he looks younger than Klein, who beats him for presumably forcing Ms. Malone to take drugs). Top-billed Don Cheadle (as Pearl Madison) isn't the star; rather, he plays a juvenile prison schoolteacher and a aspiring writer who cheats on his girlfriend. Martin Donovan (as Harry Pollard) and Kevin Spacey (as Albert T. Fitzgerald) make a "good dad"/"bad dad" comparison. Director Matthew Ryan Hoge makes a successful first impression, and much about the film is good - but, very little about it makes any sense. "The United States of Leland" could also say something about the country, or not… ***** The United States of Leland (1/18/03) Matthew Ryan Hoge ~ Ryan Gosling, Chris Klein, Jena Malone, Don Cheadle