--- title: "The Place Beyond the Pines" year: 2013 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-place-beyond-the-pines" fi1m_score: 66 critics_score: 61 critics_reviews: 27 published: "2026-09-17T12:24:55.942643+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T12:24:56.251872+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # The Place Beyond the Pines (2013) Directed by Derek Cianfrance · 2h 20m · MPA R · Drama, Crime **Fi1m score: 66** · Critics 61 from 27 reviews *In a sentence:* Ryan Gosling robs banks on a dirt bike and the film never quite recovers from how good that looks > Derek Cianfrance follows *Blue Valentine* with a story of fathers and sons in Schenectady told in three movements. The first, with Ryan Gosling on a motorcycle, is the best hour he has directed; the rest is sincere, overlong and never quite as alive. ## Synopsis Schenectady, New York. Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling), a motorcycle stunt rider with a travelling fair, rides the inside of a steel cage every night and moves on with the show each week. This year a woman from last year’s stop, Romina Gutierrez (Eva Mendes), comes to find him, and he learns she has had his son and is living with another man, Kofi Kancam (Mahershala Ali). Luke quits the fair to stay near the boy, takes a job with Robin Van Der Hook (Ben Mendelsohn), a mechanic in a trailer among the pines, and has nothing to give the child. Robin suggests a quicker way to get money: the bike, a bank, and a van parked round the corner. Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper) is a rookie policeman in the same town. ## Review Derek Cianfrance’s second film with Ryan Gosling, after [*Blue Valentine*](https://film.one/film/blue-valentine), opens with the best shot he has put on screen. Sean Bobbitt’s camera picks up Luke Glanton from behind as he flicks a knife open and shut in a caravan, then follows him without a cut through the fairground crowd, past the lights and the stalls, into a tent and up onto a motorcycle inside a steel cage, where he and two other riders start to circle the walls. It lasts a few minutes and it tells us everything: the tattoos, the bleached hair, the way the crowd parts for him and the way he does not look at them. We sat forward. For the next hour *The Place Beyond the Pines* keeps that promise. Then it reveals a larger plan, and the larger plan is the trouble. The first hour is a crime film of the patient kind. Gosling gives Luke very few words and a great deal of watching, and he lets the man be dim as well as dangerous, which most stars would not. Eva Mendes plays Romina tired and practical, a woman who has already made her decision and does not need him to approve of it. Ben Mendelsohn’s Robin is greasy, cheerful and lonely, and he says out loud what a bike can do at a bank in the tone of a man suggesting a pub. Bobbitt shoots the robberies handheld, from the pillion and from the road, so we get a teller’s face, a helmet, a stretch of tarmac and the open back of a van, all in the order Luke sees them. We were more tense than we expected to be, and then, at a christening, more moved. Luke stands at the back of the church, uninvited, in a clean shirt, watching another man hold his son, and Gosling plays it entirely in the jaw. Mike Patton’s score holds an organ chord under the scene until it hurts. Inbal Weinberg sets Kofi’s house against Robin’s trailer, the one tidy and furnished and full of a baby’s things, the other a shed with a bike in it, and the film does not have to say which life the child should have. Erin Benach dresses Luke in cut-off shirts and jeans that look slept in. Then the film takes a turn we will not describe. We can say that Bradley Cooper’s Avery Cross moves to the centre, a policeman with a law degree and a father, Al (Harris Yulin), who expects him to use it, and that Ray Liotta arrives as Peter Deluca, a colleague who shows Avery how the department really runs. Cooper is good here, ambitious and frightened at once, and Liotta does menace with a smile as well as he ever has. Rose Byrne, as Avery’s wife Jennifer, is given a kitchen and very little else. This middle section is a decent corrupt-cop story that would have made a film on its own; here it has about forty minutes and has to hurry. The last stretch belongs to two teenagers, Jason (Dane DeHaan) and AJ (Emory Cohen). DeHaan is thin, wary and quietly excellent, a boy who wants to know something and is afraid of the answer. Cohen plays AJ as a swaggering rich kid doing a poor kid’s voice, and we could not decide whether the performance was a misjudgment or the point. The script by Cianfrance, Ben Coccio and Darius Marder starts to underline. Characters say what the film is about. Coincidence does the work that plotting did in the first hour. Ron Patane and Jim Helton cut the fairground scenes tight and the final act loose, and somewhere past the two-hour mark we checked how much of the 140 minutes remained, which we had not done once during the robberies. *Blue Valentine* was two people, a house and a motel, and Cianfrance filmed them close enough to see every flinch. This film wants two generations, a town and an argument about what fathers pass on, and he is plainly better with two people in a house than with a whole town. Most critics are split down the middle on it, and for once we find ourselves in the middle with them. See it for Gosling, for Bobbitt’s opening shot, and for an hour of American crime cinema as good as any this decade has produced. Stay for the rest if fathers and sons are a subject that gets under your skin, because it gets under Cianfrance’s and he is sincere about it. It carries a 15 certificate and it earns it in the first ten minutes. *Fi1m score 66, published 17 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (27) - **Radio Times**, Damon Wise (4/5): Calls it a smart, sprawling and beautifully crafted morality tale about fathers and sons with surprising twists, though it relies a little too much on coincidence. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-2i27ce/the-place-beyond-the-pines/) - **RogerEbert.com**, Richard Roeper (80/100, inferred): The critic praises the film's ambition, strong performances especially from Gosling and Mendes, and its exploration of fate and class struggles across generations. The three-act structure is ambitious but the final act is slightly less riveting than the first two-thirds. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-place-beyond-the-pines-2013-1) - **The Independent** (80/100, inferred): The critic praises the film's ambitious scope in exploring themes of crime, fathers and sons, and American manhood while retaining the naturalistic texture of everyday life from the director's previous work. The ironic twists and consequences explored in the story are highlighted as a chief satisfaction. [Read](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/film-review-gosling-s-outlaw-blues-run-deep-and-dark-in-the-place-beyond-the-pines-8568633.html) - **Time Out**, Tom Huddleston (4/5): Describes it as an enormously satisfying, carefully observed multi-generational melodrama with a naturalistic tone and mostly strong performances, feeling like a minor American classic despite minor pacing issues and one weak supporting turn. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-place-beyond-the-pines) - **Los Angeles Times**, Betsy Sharkey (75/100, inferred): The film is a love letter to bad breaks and the ripple effects of responsibility and regret, offering intimate storytelling and rare heartbreak that is moving and evocative. It stumbles occasionally and does not reach the refinement of the director's prior work but succeeds in depicting down-market lives. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-xpm-2013-mar-28-la-et-mn-place-beyond-pines-20130329-story.html) - **Empire**, Olly Richards (70/100, inferred): The critic calls the opening section a dream and highlights the bold, beautiful filmmaking and strong performances when the film is at its best. It complains that the ambitious scope leads to the story spreading too thin in later sections with diminishing returns. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/place-beyond-pines-review/) - **Financial Times**, Antonia Quirke (70/100, inferred): The ambitious structure twists from exciting bank heists and mythic characters into something unexpected and intriguing, though it loosens and becomes imperfect in the middle and end. Quirke admires the film's reach and the strong performances, especially Gosling's mythic presence. [Read](https://www.ft.com/content/2f61a764-a291-11e2-9b70-00144feabdc0) - **Sight and Sound**, Thirza Wakefield (70/100, inferred): The critic calls it an eloquent, engaging debut-of-scale epic exploring the ties between absent fathers and their sons, with ambitious scope, strong ensemble performances and beautiful cinematography, though it is overlong and loses some momentum in the second half. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/film-week-place-beyond-pines) - **The New York Times**, A.O. Scott (70/100, inferred): The film ambitiously explores class, manhood, and fate with impressive artistry in places but suffers from excessive length and a failure of narrative economy in its three-part structure. It achieves the density of a good novel despite not fully sustaining its epic vision. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/movies/the-place-beyond-the-pines-directed-by-derek-cianfrance.html) - **Little White Lies**, Adam Woodward (4/3/3): Praises the fluid camerawork, commanding lead performances and strong cameos, but finds the over-reaching multi-generational melodrama ambitious yet not fully cohesive, with Cooper stealing the show in the later sections. [Read](https://lwlies.com/reviews/the-place-beyond-the-pines) - **Screen Daily** (50/100, inferred): Notes Cianfrance's continuing maturity and narrative complexity in this stylish story of interlocking families and generational links, but finds it lacks the emotional power of his previous film Blue Valentine. [Read](https://www.screendaily.com/the-place-beyond-the-pines/5046346.article) - **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (50/100, inferred): The film is an operatically ambitious diptych of two men and their parallel stories of fate, class and fatherhood that ultimately feels flawed due to its neat coda. Bradshaw praises Gosling's engaging performance and Cianfrance's energetic, passionate style despite the misjudgments. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/apr/11/place-beyond-the-pines-review) - **Evening Standard** (40/100, inferred): The review finds the film uneven, with the two main story strands meshing uneasily despite smart filmmaking and strong acting in places. It singles out the waste of Ryan Gosling's talents, limited mostly to bike scenes, and the overly long runtime as drawbacks. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/the-place-beyond-the-pines-film-review-8569669.html) - **Film Comment**, Nicolas Rapold (40/100, inferred): The critic finds the multigenerational epic fragmented, with weak motivation and characters making choices that don’t compute, suggesting the director’s limitations as a storyteller. Cooper’s segment offers the most complexity and a sense of American reality. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/article/the-place-beyond-the-pines-derek-cianfrance-review/) - **The New Yorker**, David Denby (40/100, inferred): The movie is earnest and ambitious but patchy and underdone, with strong direction of actors undermined by fuzzy character details and an overreliance on big ideas rather than common sense. It centers on male generational relationships but slights female characters and fails to fully dramatize its themes. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/04/01/rough-rides) - **Variety** (35/100, inferred): The overlong film fails to make a full movie from two half-stories about fathers and sons on opposite sides of the law, with a lean first segment giving way to less compelling later parts that feel rote and linear compared to the director's previous work. [Read](https://variety.com/2013/film/reviews/the-place-beyond-the-pines-1117948245/) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, David Rooney (30/100, inferred): The drama about the reverberations of the sins of the fathers packs moments of searing power but is far more diffuse than Cianfrance's previous film and has a choppy narrative that strains for thematic cohesion. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/place-beyond-pines-toronto-review-368899/) - **Vulture**, David Edelstein (30/100, inferred): The triptych feels like a clear-cut forest full of empty space, with sketchily written monodramas and screenwriter overreaching that make the big moments unconvincing. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/2013/03/movie-review-the-place-beyond-the-pines.html) - **Slant Magazine**, Ed Gonzalez (20/100, inferred): Cianfrance uses ostentatious style to caulk over vacuousness and sacrifices emotional specificity to purple marriages of sight and sound in a daisy chain of violence that is a dazzling con. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/the-place-beyond-the-pines/) - **Collider**, Matt Goldberg (A): The critic describes it as a rich, multi-layered epic family saga that explores fatalism, guilt, and unintended legacies through three connected stories. They single out the strong performances by Ryan Gosling and Dane DeHaan and the innovative storytelling structure for praise. [Read](https://collider.com/place-beyond-the-pines-review/) - **The Playlist**, The Playlist Staff (A): Cianfrance delivers an ambitious epic about fathers, sons and the legacy of sins passed across generations. It features strong performances across the board, especially from newcomers Dane DeHaan and Emory Cohen, and stands as a cinematic accomplishment of extraordinary grace and insight. [Read](https://theplaylist.net/review-the-place-beyond-the-pines-a-searing-tale-of-fathers-sons-the-legacy-of-sins-20130328/) - **Den of Geek**, Ryan Lambie (4/5): A bleak yet rewarding character study that refuses to glamorize its characters or their actions, presenting criminality as a symptom of poverty rather than a cool lifestyle. Excellent performances and audacious structure help overcome some narrative fragmentation. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-place-beyond-the-pines-review/) - **Eye for Film**, Merlin Harries (80/100, inferred): Cianfrance is commended for delivering something increasingly rare: a truly epic film. It spans two generations with an unflinching look at how paternal sins revisit the sons amid crime, corruption and moral questions. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/the-place-beyond-the-pines-2012-film-review-by-merlin-harries) - **Consequence** (75/100, inferred): The review calls it a dark, ambitious study of the bond between fathers and sons across generations, noting its natural pacing, stark realism, and gripping tension from the first frame. It praises the performances and the positive outlook on paternal bonds despite the dreariness. [Read](https://consequence.net/2013/04/film-review-the-place-beyond-the-pines/) - **/Film**, Germain Lussier (7/10): Cianfrance has created a solid human drama with impressive performances, particularly from Cooper and DeHaan. It questions moral dilemmas and how tiny decisions ripple through lives, though the anthology-like structure can feel disjointed. [Read](https://www.slashfilm.com/525460/the-place-beyond-the-pines-review-ryan-gosling-and-bradley-cooper-highlight-generational-drama/) - **Paste**, Annlee Ellingson (8.8): The film is praised as an emotionally intense exploration of fathers and sons and legacy in three acts, with standout close-up camerawork and Gosling's layered performance. The critic highlights the gritty realism and meditative quality of the action scenes. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/the-place-beyond-the-pines) - **The Wrap** (55/100, inferred): The critic finds the film ambitious but ultimately overburdened by its symbolic weight on father-son themes. Strong performances and authentic settings in the opening section are highlighted as strengths, while later parts feel heavy-handed. [Read](https://www.thewrap.com/place-beyond-pines-review-ryan-gosling-bradley-cooper-overwrought-daddy-issues-83006/) ## Details - **Director:** Derek Cianfrance - **Director:** Derek Cianfrance - **Screenplay:** Derek Cianfrance, Darius Marder, Ben Coccio - **Story:** Ben Coccio, Derek Cianfrance - **Cinematography:** Sean Bobbitt - **Editor:** Ron Patane, Jim Helton - **Music:** Mike Patton - **Production design:** Inbal Weinberg - **Costume design:** Erin Benach - **Producer:** Sidney Kimmel, Jamie Patricof, Alex Orlovsky - **Cast:** Ryan Gosling as Luke Glanton; Bradley Cooper as Avery Cross; Eva Mendes as Romina Gutierrez; Rose Byrne as Jennifer Cross; Ray Liotta as Peter Deluca; Dane DeHaan as Jason Kancam; Emory Cohen as AJ Cross; Mahershala Ali as Kofi Kancam - **Runtime:** 2h 20m - **Certificate (MPA):** R - **Release (the US):** 19 April 2013 - **Genres:** Drama, Crime - **Budget:** $15 million - **Box office:** $47 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KepnbJT5nBw ## Where to watch in the US - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd - Apple TV: rent $3.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $14.99, hd - Apple TV: buy $14.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AE, AT, AU, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, DE, DK, ES, FI, FR, GB, IE, IT, MX, NO, NZ, PL, SE, UA, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Blue Valentine* (2010), Fi1m 82: Cianfrance and Gosling in one room, where the director is at his strongest — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/blue-valentine.md) - *Mystic River* (2003), Fi1m 82: Another blue-collar town where one crime bends three lives for decades — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/mystic-river.md) - *Rocco and His Brothers* (1960): Visconti’s family saga; the original template for sons paying for fathers - *Animal Kingdom* (2010), Fi1m 84: Mendelsohn again, terrifying, in a crime family drama built on dread — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/animal-kingdom.md) - *A Prophet* (2009), Fi1m 86: A French prison story that follows one young man’s making with the same patience — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/a-prophet.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/the-place-beyond-the-pines