The Times Online
November 11, 2002
Review by James Christopher

Mehdi Norowzian’s Leo is the strange tale of a 33-year-old ex-con who writes touching letters to a young boy. Joseph Fiennes makes a decent fist of the lugubrious wordsmith forced to work in a godforsaken diner run by Sam Shepard and patronised by Dennis Hopper. If this constipated Lynchian double-act doesn’t make you wince, then Elisabeth Shue will. Her torturous performance as a hysterical mother who spends 18 years having a tantrum at the expense of her only son (she lost the rest of the family in a car crash) is the stuff of nightmares. A shame because Norowzian makes genuine efforts to be visually experimental, and the sadistic diner scenes are nicely worked.

Two stars