The Place Beyond The Pines

At times I begin to wonder if it’s me, or if I’ve watched the same movie other folks have.

Last night we sat down to watch The Place Beyond The Pines. The synopses sounded good. Rotten tomatoes had a great score (78%), so when I had enough of this snooze-fest, I am wondering what is going on. Am I missing something?

In my boredom with the movie, I do see lots of comments in Rotten tomatoes describing what I saw. But an awful lot of post were calling this ‘epic’ in nature and best film of the year. I am scratching my head.

So now you know I didn’t like The Place Beyond the Pines. I’ll tell you the many reasons why.
Ryan Gosling. For the life of me, I don’t understand the praise this guy gets. I see him do one thing in movies. Stoned face, little words. If you liked his brooding character in Drive, then you’ll like him here. He does zero for me. I honestly do not see him even act. Which bring to mind the things he does.
This script has soooo many illogical moments. Why people do things in this movie just did not make any sense. There are too many, but I can see it was to move the story along and tie it back to another moment. Still, even for a drama, the decisions and actions are head scratchers.

Also the story is very predictable. I saw stuff coming a mile away.
The movie is far too long. After 1 hour and 45 minutes, I gave up. Stopped. I’m not giving away too much, but the movie is 3 different stories. The first hour belongs to Ryan Gosling’s character. The 2nd story belongs to Bradly Cooper’s character which overlaps at times the first hour. The 3rd section then gets into the children’s lives of the first two characters. If I didn’t care about the first two chapters, I certainly didn’t care at all of the last act.

It’s a very slow movie. Some may say it was a slow build up of character and tension. Nu-uh, the movie never gets out of 2nd gear. Even when Ryan Gosling is doing all the bank robberies, it’s still a yawn fest. Believe me, the trailer tries to make it look like plenty of action... uh, no
Gawd, this movie was slow.

Ray Liotta… well, he did what he only knows. The same character in all his other movies. A low life, corrupt character. Nothing new here. In fact, there is nothing new in this movie. I feel I’ve seen all these scenes some time before, and I don’t even like cop thriller movies.
I will never watch this again.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G07pSbHLXgg

Never heard of it.