Watch The United States of Leland For Free

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

The United States of Leland is a lovable film about a semi-detached kid named Leland P. Fitzgerald. Leland ,played by a very young Ryan Gosling, has an "awkward" look on life to say the least. He never sees his father and his girlfriend is a heroin addict.This movies time-line is all messed up, in all honesty. Though I just told you the beginning of the story, you do not figure any of that out until after half of the movie is over. The true plot comes when Leland, a seemingly gentle person, commits the murder of a special needs kid. The kid was also his girlfriends brother. Well Ex- girlfriend. At this point in the movie, she had already broken little Leland's heart, which maybe one of the only scenes he shows emotion.While he is in juvenile hall, the movie jumps back and forth and seems to be trying to explain why he done what he had done. Leland meets a man who takes an interest in him. He wants to write a book about Leland. He sneaks Leland a pencil and a notebook which Leland titles The United States Of Leland. He constantly writes in this book, and when the movie is concluding, the author wanna-be decides to read the notebook. Leland wrote about how sad the world is, and how he seen the sadness the most in the kid he murdered. Of course, none of this is revealed until Leland is murdered in Juvenile hall by a close family friend to the victim.Do You agree? disagree? Whatever the case, make sure you watch this movie knowing it uses the word 'retard' a lot. Just a warning.Gavin Johns, Wanna-Be critic, [email protected]

Leland P. Fitzgerald (Ryan Gosling) kills mentally retarded Ryan Pollard stabbing him 20 times. This devastates the Pollard family (Martin Donovan, Ann Magnuson), Becky (Jena Malone), Julie (Michelle Williams) and her boyfriend Allen Harris (Chris Klein). Leland had a relationship with Becky. Leland's divorced mother Marybeth (Lena Olin) is desperate and his father Albert (Kevin Spacey) is a famous writer. Charlie is Leland's lawyer. Guillermo (Michael Peña) and Bengel (Wesley Jonathan) are fellow inmates and Pearl Madison (Don Cheadle) is their teacher at the juvenile detention center. Ayesha (Kerry Washington) is the new secretary. Pearl is a writer and he decides to make Leland his next subject.The tone is off for me. I don't like the soft rock music setting the tone. The movie needs more intensity. I also don't like Gosling decision on his speaking voice sometimes. The story telling is muddled. This should zero in on Leland, Becky and Ryan. Gosling has shown himself to be a master at emotionally complicated romance and this movie should rely on that more. Pearl is an unnecessary plot device. Writers sometimes write themselves into the story. Pearl is simply in the way. Instead of flashbacks, the movie should play it straighter and without Pearl. Either that or concentrate on the aftermath affecting the families. I don't care about Pearl.

"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

This movie is like reading an 8th grader's goth poetry: self-important, self-indulgent, and hyper dramatic, death is so romantic, heroin use is so cool, and I'm so deep and important because I'm sad. Actually, it's worse than reading junior high goth poetry.I am a huge fan of Ryan Gosling and he was terrible here. It's a minor feat to make Gosling unwatchable, but they did it. This film is not deep or profound, but indulgent and false. I challenge anyone to find a more clichéd role in film than Kevin Spacey's writer character who abandons his son, then sits in a hotel bar with a bottle of scotch solo, or worse, sits in his car with a voice recorder and says, "there was a time when we moved through life, with something like electricity..." . Laughable.Here's the story for you: Leland, a weird, squeaky voiced misfit who appears to be missing a few points of articulation in his body (Gosling) begins to date a super cool hipster music junkie (Mallone) and then she dumps him. This sends Gosling out of orbit, and he stabs to death Mallone's retarded brother. Then Leland goes to juvie and has really deep conversations with Don Cheadle and another detainee. Cheadle is a failed writer who wants to write about Leland because he's so fascinating, and who can argue that a semi-retarded squeaky voiced kid shuffling his feet and looking like he has to take a dump is not fascinating? Cheadle confronts Leland's missing dad, Spacey, cheats on his girlfriend because he wants to do bad things and gains Insight. Leland writes a surefire best-seller diary and gives it to Cheadle, then gets knifed in the yard by Chris Klein. Klein is the live-in boyfriend of Mallone's sister. He gets dumped, and then overwhelmed when Leland knifes the kid, so decides to get locked up in juvie to have a go at Leland. Wow, all these parts, these machinations, it's like a Swiss watch! Um... no.When Klein finally knifes Leland, he says off-camera "it's over." But it isn't. You still have to watch some closeups of Leland, because he's so profound, and tragic, and he's like a saint or an angel come to earth to tell us about our sad lives. That's what having your first girlfriend dump you will do. You'll all go out and stab retarded kids in the park, because, see, life is so heavy and we're all ignoring the sadness.Meanwhile, the characters all repeat dialogue about "making mistakes" and "doing nothing wrong" and somewhere buried in all this is the conceit that we all make mistakes. WOW, you didn't see that one coming, did you?This movie is not good. Don't waste your time.