L.I.E.

Name: L.I.E.
Director: Michael Cuesta
Released: 2001

Synopsis

In the space of a week, Howie loses nearly everything and everyone he knows and is left to navigate his adolescence virtually unsupervised.

88
New York Daily News
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.
80
Los Angeles Times
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.
75
Miami Herald
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.
75
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
An original, well-crafted plea that uses restraint instead of titillation to make a cautionary tale that aches with pathos and power.
70
Washington Post
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.
70
Village Voice
Preposterous enough to entertain.
67
Austin Chronicle
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.
63
New York Post
Depicts the bleak suburban milieu in a manner that avoids exploitation.