The Place Beyond The Pines Reviews

As schematic as a family tree.

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The result is an oddly broken-backed narrative, with three distinct chapters and no central character to carry the narrative. The ambition, to tell a complex story over two generations, is laudable, but the result isn't entirely satisfying.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

An interesting movie, followed by a less interesting movie, followed by a third movie that's even weaker

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

Like a four-hour miniseries crammed into a 90-minute time slot.

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For the most part ... this is self-serious stuff, seething with ambition but almost devoid of spontaneity, and ultimately drained of genuine energy.

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Basically a two act play, "The Place Beyond the Pines" attempts to be a clever puzzle but by the time the pieces are put into place you just want to sweep the whole thing off the table

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

The movie settles into conventional rhythms once the focus shifts to Bradley Cooper and completely loses its way after that.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

The Place Beyond the Pines is ten pounds of film stuffed into a five-pound movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.0/5

By the time director and co-writer Derek Cianfrance gets to the third act, it's a soap opera and not a very good one.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5

An over-stuffed, hyper-pulpy, and mostly trite trifurcated drama about family, crime, and moral ambiguity.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4

An unbalanced dual narrative plays out in Derek Cianfrance's ("Blue Valentine") unsteady attempt to extract universal truths about unintended legacies passed down from father to son.

Full Review | Original Score: C+

''The Place Beyond the Pines'' aims admirably for an epic sense of Greek tragedy, and it does have some powerful individual moments, but the characters are all so underdeveloped that the whole effort feels like studied posturing.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

The Place Beyond the Pines wants to be a deep-dish meditation on fathers, sons, and the consequences of the decisions we make. But it's a slow-burner that burns so slowly its wick completely fizzles out.

Full Review | Original Score: C

Attempts to depict a vicious circle of anguish that's as profound as a stacked deck eventually tipping over.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

Cianfrance hasn't figured out what he wants to say, but he spends a lot of time and energy trying to say it.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

Its three stories are so loosely connected, its themes so scattered -- morality, justice, fate, fatherhood -- that it never manages to make a point.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

a film for sinners that can't even bother to see the fun and comfort in sinning.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5

Great cast but the script meanders and ends up nowhere.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10

Each chapter of The Place Beyond the Pines gets successively less interesting than the last ...

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"It's up to the actors to figure this out, and they try...but The Place Beyond the Pines displays a strange paternalistic streak."

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5