‘Leland’ needs some visual perking up

“The United States of Leland” is an ambitious and intelligent film probing that chronic contemporary phenomenon, the seemingly senseless crime, but it is ultimately unsatisfying for all its efforts and various pluses. It would seem that it is too ambitious a project for its fledgling writer-director, Matthew Ryan Hoge, who has made a doggedly dialogue-driven film that taps virtually no resources of the camera. The key problem, however, is that all of the characters seem to be speaking in the same exceedingly articulate, thoughtful voices of its two principal figures, Leland Fitzgerald (Ryan Gosling) and Pearl Madison (Don Cheadle).

Leland, a high school student in an upscale L.A. suburb, commits a terrible crime but has no memory of it. Awaiting trial in Juvenile Hall, Leland intrigues Madison, a teacher there, who starts trying to get the quiet youth to open up.

Madison would like to help Leland, but even more he sees in his story the perfect fodder for the novel that would provide his escape from his unrewarding job at Juvenile Hall. That Leland seems so unlikely a criminal and especially that his father, Albert (Kevin Spacey), is precisely the celebrated author Madison craves to become himself drives the teacher to press on.

As Madison uncovers more about Leland, Hoge shows us the effect of his crime upon the victim’s family, the Pollards, which includes a daughter, Becky (Jena Malone), insecure and deeply enamored of Leland yet frustrated by his seeming detachment. Along with Becky’s parents (Martin Donovan and Ann Magnuson), who seem to be a perfectly normal couple, the household includes Becky’s older sister, Julie (Michelle Williams), a high school senior, and also her boyfriend, Allen (Chris Klein), who has been invited to stay with the Pollards in the wake of his mother’s recent death. Hoge reveals nothing about Leland’s mother beyond her understandable anguish.

Hoge strives to avoid offering a too literal cause-and-effect reason for Leland’s attack on the autistic boy and instead serves up a scattering of clues that seem not intended to add up and in fact don’t. Unfortunately, Hoge makes no use of the film medium’s potential to convey Leland’s inner life to allow the viewer to feel he could have been driven to commit such a savage crime even if it defies easy explanation. Actually, Hoge makes a concerted effort to shift the film’s focus to Leland’s effect upon Madison and on the youth’s ability to turn the tables on his teacher and force him to reflect upon his own morality and lack of same.

It’s nice that Hoge has been able to show that Leland is capable of a positive effect on another person, but that doesn’t let Hoge off the hook for having failed to make Leland a credible killer in the first place.

There seems no question that Hoge is trying to express through Leland a concern for a seemingly ever-deepening disconnection between human beings, a deadening of emotions, especially in young people, in contemporary society. But his film is devoid of expressive imagery; the world of his people counts for no more than a painted backdrop. If Hoge is not inspired as a filmmaker, he is a fine director of actors. His film offers the formidable Don Cheadle with one of his strongest, most substantial roles, and Gosling has been able to make the opaque Leland at least engaging, especially in his debates with Cheadle. There are solid performances straight down the line, but except for Cheadle’s Pearl, the only other truly distinctive character in the entire film is Spacey’s Albert. The encounters between Pearl and Albert have a snap that helps bring “The United States of Leland” to life.

*

‘The United States of Leland’

MPAA rating: R, for language and some drug content

Times guidelines: Complex adult themes and relationships, too intense for children

Don Cheadle...Pearl Madison

Ryan Gosling...Leland Fitzgerald

Chris Klein...Allen Harris

Jena Malone...Becky Pollard

Lena Olin...Marybeth Fitzgerald

Kevin Spacey...Albert T. Fitzgerald

A Paramount Classics and Thousand Words presentation in association with Media 8 Entertainment of a Trigger Street production. Writer-director Matthew Ryan Hoge. Producers Kevin Spacey, Bernie Morris. Executive producers Mark Damon, Sammy Lee, Stewart Hall. Cinematographer James Glennon. Editor Jeff Betancourt. Music Jeremy Enigk. Costumes Genevieve Tyrrell. Production designer Edward T. McAvoy. Set decorator Jan Pascale.

Exclusively at the Westside Pavilion Cinemas, 10800 W. Pico Blvd, West Los Angeles, (310) 281-8223; The Grove Stadium 14, 3rd Street and The Grove Drive, (323) 692-0829; the Monica 4-Plex, 1332 2nd St., Santa Monica, (310) 394-9741; University 6, Campus Drive, across from UCI, (800) FANDANGO 143#.