The Place Beyond the Pines
Focus Features | Release Date: March 29, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
68
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 42 Critic Reviews
Positive:
29
Mixed:
13
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperMar 27, 2013
The music, the cinematography, the acting choices, the daring plot leaps — not a single element is timid or safe...The Place Beyond the Pines earns every second of its 140-minute running time. Read full review
100
ObserverRex ReedMar 26, 2013
I think you’ll find it as fresh, original and breathlessly exciting as I did. Read full review
100
The PlaylistKevin JagernauthMar 3, 2013
A brilliant, towering picture, The Place Beyond The Pines is a cinematic accomplishment of extraordinary grace and insight. Read full review
91
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallApr 10, 2013
It's a story languorously told in three chapters, the first two in the late 1980s and the third 15 years later. Each could be a movie unto themselves. Together they prove Cianfrance to be an effectively unobtrusive storyteller, crafting without artifice what book critics would call a page turner. Read full review
91
IndieWireEric KohnMar 3, 2013
That the movie succeeds both as a high-stakes crime thriller as well as a far quieter and empathetic study of angry, solitary men proves that Cianfrance has a penchant for bold storytelling and an eye for performances to carry it through. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleLeah ChurnerApr 10, 2013
The film is so velvety textured and dreamy, I would’ve stuck around for more. That is Cianfrance’s special talent. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaApr 11, 2013
This is a story about legacy, the sins of the father, the restlessness in our souls. It's powerful, it's bold, it hits you hard. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsApr 4, 2013
It is a better, more fully felt and moving picture than "Blue Valentine." Read full review
88
USA TodayClaudia PuigMar 28, 2013
A riveting crime thriller, it's also a multi-generational familial saga that approaches Greek tragedy. Read full review
88
New York PostKyle SmithMar 28, 2013
Don't let the quiet, indie stylings of The Place Beyond the Pines fool you. This is a big movie with a lot on its mind. Slowly, it unfolds into a kind of epic. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianMarc MohanApr 4, 2013
Cianfrance is the real deal, and anyone who can persuade talented Hollywood stars to enact nonironic, intelligent, ambitious drama should be encouraged, especially when the result is something like this. Read full review
80
Time Out LondonTom HuddlestonApr 29, 2013
An enormously satisfying film: carefully observed and consistently compelling, it feels like an instant American classic, if a minor one. Read full review
80
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottApr 12, 2013
It's not a perfect film. There's still room for Cianfrance to grow as a storyteller. But it is entirely rewarding -- and I, for one, can't wait to see where he takes us next. Read full review
80
EmpireOlly RichardsApr 8, 2013
In trying to tell an enormous amount of story it can spread itself too thin and leave some strands feeling unfinished, but when it’s at its best, this is beautiful and bold filmmaking. Read full review
80
Total FilmJamie GrahamMar 30, 2013
Gosling and Cooper use their star currency to power a slow-burn, heartsick drama. "Blue Valentine" director Cianfrance is a serious talent. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonApr 12, 2013
The acting is first-rate. Gosling masterfully fills in Luke’s motivational blanks, and Cooper nicely handles Avery’s evolution from idealist to manipulator. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter TraversMar 28, 2013
It's a beast of a movie, an emotional roller coaster that threatens to go off the rails, and does. But Cianfrance, working from a scrappy script he wrote with Ben Coccio and Darius Marder, takes you on a hell of a ride. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliMar 28, 2013
The characters are interesting and capture our sympathy and, although there are things to criticize about the final forty-five minutes, it brings the saga to a conclusion. There's a lot to like about The Place Beyond the Pines even if it isn't the feel-good movie of the spring. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubNathan RabinMar 27, 2013
Few actors are as riveting doing absolutely nothing, and The Place Beyond The Pines perfectly typecasts Gosling as a noir staple: the decent but rudderless drifter driven to violent and desperate action. Read full review
75
Film.comLaremy LegelMar 3, 2013
There 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. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzApr 4, 2013
The risk of telling three distinct-but-related stories is that all may not be of equal quality. That’s the case here, as the movie starts strong but gets progressively weaker, particularly in the third act. Read full review
70
TimeMary PolsApr 1, 2013
The Place Beyond the Pines can’t be said to be anyone’s movie but Cianfrance’s. Structured as a triptych, the movie is novelistic, earnest and somewhat exhausting — an ambitious effort that tries to be many things. And it is definitely something: a sprawling, engaging study in fathers, sons and sins. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyMar 28, 2013
The movie is intimate in its telling, sweeping in its issues and stumbles only occasionally. Read full review
70
SlateDana StevensMar 28, 2013
The movie’s soulful self-seriousness, like that of its liquid-eyed hero, can occasionally slip into self-parody. But this movie confirms my "Blue Valentine"-based suspicion that the 38-year-old Cianfrance is one to watch. He’s capable of coaxing tremendous moments from actors, he knows how to move a camera, and as this over-laden but never boring movie shows, he’s willing to operate from a place of risk. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternMar 28, 2013
One-third wonderful, The Place Beyond the Pines weakens as it unfolds for lack of what makes the early part so good. Read full review
70
The New York TimesA.O. ScottMar 28, 2013
The three-part story, spread over nearly two and a half hours, represents a triumph of sympathetic imagination and a failure of narrative economy. But if, in the end, the film can’t quite sustain its epic vision, it does, along the way, achieve the density and momentum of a good novel. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyMar 3, 2013
Cianfrance 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. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenApr 11, 2013
Once again, Cianfrance handles the individual scenes with menacing aplomb but, once again, the whole is much less than the sum of its parts. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy BurrApr 4, 2013
It’s very much a film about men, their yearnings and discontents, and about the way sins tumble down from one generation to the next. It’s a bank-robber movie, too, as well as a drama about the pressures teenagers face from parents and peers. You can feel Cianfrance biting off more and more until his mouth is too full to chew. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierMar 28, 2013
The poetry in The Place Beyond the Pines can be elusive, but also easy to get lost in. Read full review
60
SalonAndrew O'HehirMar 27, 2013
I never stopped being interested in The Place Beyond the Pines, and never stopped rooting for Cianfrance to make the hubristic ambition of his immense tripartite scheme pay off, even as it evidently falls apart. Read full review
60
Village VoiceScott FoundasMar 26, 2013
The Place Beyond the Pines is a much bigger canvas, and scene by scene it can be riveting...But the disparate pieces never quite jell; the movie is all trees and no forest. Read full review
60
Time OutJoshua RothkopfMar 26, 2013
Yet after the actorcentric fireworks of Cianfrance’s "Blue Valentine" (2010), it’s impressive to see him going after a wider sociopolitical scope, one that would have been better served by a less repetitive structure. Read full review
60
The GuardianHenry BarnesMar 3, 2013
The Place Beyond the Pines is ambitious and epic, perhaps to a fault. Read full review
50
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezApr 12, 2013
While the scope of the movie is bigger, its impact is smaller. "Blue Valentine" was a precise, heartrending portrait of a marriage coming apart at the seams. The theme of his new movie is a lot harder to discern. Read full review
50
NPRMark JenkinsMar 28, 2013
Too much of this seething drama is devoted not to characterization but to posturing. Read full review
50
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyMar 27, 2013
It's a slow-burner that burns so slowly its wick completely fizzles out. Read full review
50
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreMar 26, 2013
Unwieldy, 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. Read full review
50
The New YorkerDavid DenbyMar 25, 2013
Cool, 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. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinMar 25, 2013
The segments are essentially monodramas, so sketchily written that the big moments feel less like recognizable human behavior than recognizable screenwriter overreaching. Read full review
50
VarietyPeter DebrugeMar 22, 2013
Two 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. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineMar 15, 2013
The film never reaches a climax because it's always in one, distilling the lives of its characters to their tensest moments. Read full review
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