Daily Star
March 12, 2004

Brit Joseph Fiennes is doing making cow eyes at the camera and struggling with an American accent as an ex-con trying to go straight in the after 15 years in jail is between him and his heartless agent. Elisabeth Shue and hammy Dennis Hopper are also involved in this pretentious catastrophe. Make a massive effort to ensure that you don't join them.
VERDICT: 1/10

The Daily Telegraph
March 12, 2004
By Tim Robey

It really is the week for spiralling self-indulgence at an art house near you. Leo, a laughably mannered Freudian psychodrama, stars Joseph Fiennes as a fey parolee answering letters from the young son of a suburban widow (Elizabeth Shue). The film doesn't so much wear its literary allusions on its sleeve as flap them around in your face like a giant napkin: the kid's called Leopold Bloom and Fiennes is "Stephen". You know you're in trouble when both Sam Shepard and Dennis Hopper, actors not generally known for playing anyone other than themselves, turn up in support. Loopily structured, Leo seems to think it's Lost Highway or something. Lost, we'll give it.

Daily Record
March 12, 2004
By Alan Morrison

JUNE 16 marks the centenary of the day featured in James Joyce's famous novel, Ulysses. Better to struggle through the book than sit through this clever-clever updated spin on Joyce's characters. The film swaps Dublin for the American South, where in the 1960s we find Molly (Elisabeth Shue) descending into alcoholism when she remarries a lout after her husband and daughter are killed. Decades on, Stephen (Joseph Fiennes) has found a job in a diner after serving 15 years in prison for murder. In the evenings, he writes his thoughts down as unpublished novels. This self-consciously literary film keeps overstating its themes in 'look at me, mum' ways which reveal its pretentious leanings. It's skillfully shot and assembled, but the final revelation is poor.