Film Reviews

Leo

• Rating:
• Director: Mehdi Norowzian.
• Starring: Joseph Fiennes, Elisabeth Shue, Sam Shepard, Dennis Hopper, Davis Sweat, Deborah Kara Unger, Mary Stuart Masterson, Justin Chambers.
• Details: US / 103 mins / (15PG).

Gorgeously shot, Leo is a film of two parallel stories which are told in tandem and unsurprisingly, come together. In the first, a 1960s mother (Elizabeth Shue) has abandoned her PhD to help her husband win a major academic promotion. Disappointed by the hand that life has dealt her, things take a serious and unexpected turn for the worst. In the second story, which is set in the modern day, a young man called Stephen (a dead-eyed Fiennes) has just been released from jail after serving 15 years for murder. An unlikely ex-con, the thoughtful Stephen is given a parole gig at a diner, run by Vic (Sam Shepard). It's there that the staff are terrorised by a nutter (Hopper, picking up a pay cheque) who claims to own half the business. A film which never hides its themes of faith, loss of innocence and - that old chestnut - redemption, Leo might not be the most narratively ambitious film, but it looks stunning. The cinematography by Zubin Mistry is quite lovely, with the director artfully presenting the story, without resorting to too many visual cliches. Where the problem lies is with the unadventurous script. After tempting the audience into engaging with these characters, there's not enough done to maintain interest and the screenplay falls into a stylised formula which belies its original promise. Still, it really does look nice.

Review by Garreth Murphy