Salocin.com
November 8, 2002
Review by incandenza

Leo starring Joseph Fiennes and Elizabeth Shue has an excellent idea and explores it in a delicate and intelligent manner. The shame is that there are ten franchise movies for every Leo, whilst you could afford to make ten Leo's for the price of one Mission Impossible or XXX. Go figure.

What I can say is that the standard of acting is universally excellent. Elizabeth Shue excels in her part as a guilt ridden mother although I could not help but wonder if her tearful final scene was necessary to the story or an excuse for her to further flex some acting muscles. Joseph Fiennes delivers a majestic understated performance in the lead whilst Sam Shephard as a grizzled diner manager and Mary Stuart Masterson give excellent support. And Dennis Hopper ... well he plays Dennis Hopper in yet another "signature" psychopath performance. It is a shame because his is the only part that seems untrue. It is as if casting him is cinematic shorthand for "bad man" in the same way Paul Sorvino equals "gangster" or Meg Ryan equals "cookie lovelorn yuppie".

The first time director Mehdi Norowzian for the most part does an excellent and controlled job, allowing the story to play out at its own pace, although there are moments when his background in advertising show through with some unnecessarily self conscious and overtly showy shots and compositions.

Writers Amir and Massy Tadjedin have constructed an elegant and lyrical parable and although the titular Leopold Bloom is a character from Ulysses with its themes of circularity, of insight spanning a life time and eventually of finding peace within the self, it was another Joyce work, Dubliners, that came to mind for me. Leo is a cinematic representation of epiphany and a film I would certainly recommend to any filmgoer looking for ideas once the lights dim and the curtains part.