68
Metascore
42 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100The PlaylistKevin JagernauthThe PlaylistKevin JagernauthA brilliant, towering picture, The Place Beyond The Pines is a cinematic accomplishment of extraordinary grace and insight.
- 75Film.comLaremy LegelFilm.comLaremy LegelThere is true beauty in the despair that pervades The Place Beyond the Pines, a film plotted out in triptych, a treatise on the moral compromises we all make to protect and provide for our loved ones.
- 70The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyThe Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyCianfrance generally shows again that he knows how to build immersive characterizations with his actors. And while this sorrowful triptych is uneven and perhaps overly ambitious, the director displays a cool mastery of atmospherics and tone.
- 60The GuardianHenry BarnesThe GuardianHenry BarnesThe Place Beyond the Pines is ambitious and epic, perhaps to a fault.
- 50Slant MagazineSlant MagazineThe film never reaches a climax because it's always in one, distilling the lives of its characters to their tensest moments.
- 50VarietyPeter DebrugeVarietyPeter DebrugeTwo half-stories about fathers and sons on opposite sides of the law do not a full movie make in The Place Beyond the Pines, the overlong and under-conceived reunion between “Blue Valentine” director Derek Cianfrance and lookalike star Ryan Gosling.
- 50New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinNew York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinThe segments are essentially monodramas, so sketchily written that the big moments feel less like recognizable human behavior than recognizable screenwriter overreaching.
- 50The New YorkerDavid DenbyThe New YorkerDavid DenbyCool, violent, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, Gosling reprises his inexorable-loner routine from “Drive.” Cianfrance and the screenwriters Ben Coccio and Darius Marder wrote thirty-seven drafts of the script, but gave him almost nothing to say. He rides, he smokes, he knocks over banks, he loves his baby, and that’s it.
- 50McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreMcClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreUnwieldy, overlong and overly reliant on melodramatic coincidences, A Place in the Pines is still better than it has any right to be, thanks to its cast.