Metacritic-Rezensionen

Dano is a real find in this daunting role about a teenager's identity crisis. The subject of the movie is dicey but ultimately deeply rewarding.

L.I.E. has embraced tragedy, folly, perversity and outrageous dark humor. Like "Happiness" and "American Beauty," it takes an unflinching look at the darker aspects of life in American suburbia.

A mature, insightful and extremely well-acted study of a boy at a crossroads in his life, and a doomed, tortured man who, consciously or not, longs for some kind of redemption, before it's too late.

An original, well-crafted plea that uses restraint instead of titillation to make a cautionary tale that aches with pathos and power.

In a role that challenges our very notion of morality, Cox comes across as both predatory and fatherly, sometimes at once, in an acting turn as astonishing as it is stomach-turning.

Preposterous enough to entertain.

A paradox, balancing the contradictions and ambiguities of its characters and setting with a careful hand that rarely falters, even though the film seems dramatically thin at times.

Depicts the bleak suburban milieu in a manner that avoids exploitation.

Though I admire much of what Cuesta does in L.I.E., the film didn't give me much pleasure. I didn't find it unpleasant or repulsive; it's just that I felt he was too much outside the story.

Paints a sincere and serious portrait of the seductiveness of evil and the self-destructive nature of depravity.