---
title: "The Place Beyond the Pines: the reviews"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-place-beyond-the-pines/reviews"
title_page: "https://film.one/film/the-place-beyond-the-pines"
critics_score: 61
critics_reviews: 27
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): what the critics said

Critics' score 61 from 27 reviews: 16 positive, 4 mixed, 7 negative.

## Radio Times — Damon Wise

Rating 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 the review](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-2i27ce/the-place-beyond-the-pines/)

## RogerEbert.com — Richard Roeper

Fi1m's normalised score 80/100 (inferred from the text). 3 April 2013. 

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 the review](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-place-beyond-the-pines-2013-1)

## The Independent

Fi1m's normalised score 80/100 (inferred from the text). 11 April 2013. 

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 the review](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

Rating 4/5. 9 April 2013. 

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 the review](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-place-beyond-the-pines)

## Los Angeles Times — Betsy Sharkey

Fi1m's normalised score 75/100 (inferred from the text). 28 March 2013. 

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 the review](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-xpm-2013-mar-28-la-et-mn-place-beyond-pines-20130329-story.html)

## Empire — Olly Richards

Fi1m's normalised score 70/100 (inferred from the text). 26 March 2013. 

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 the review](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/place-beyond-pines-review/)

## Financial Times — Antonia Quirke

Fi1m's normalised score 70/100 (inferred from the text). 11 April 2013. 

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 the review](https://www.ft.com/content/2f61a764-a291-11e2-9b70-00144feabdc0)

## Sight and Sound — Thirza Wakefield

Fi1m's normalised score 70/100 (inferred from the text). 12 April 2013. 

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 the review](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/film-week-place-beyond-pines)

## The New York Times — A.O. Scott

Fi1m's normalised score 70/100 (inferred from the text). 29 March 2013. 

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 the review](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/movies/the-place-beyond-the-pines-directed-by-derek-cianfrance.html)

## Little White Lies — Adam Woodward

Rating 4/3/3. 11 April 2013. 

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 the review](https://lwlies.com/reviews/the-place-beyond-the-pines)

## Screen Daily

Fi1m's normalised score 50/100 (inferred from the text). 8 September 2012. Festival review. 

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 the review](https://www.screendaily.com/the-place-beyond-the-pines/5046346.article)

## The Guardian — Peter Bradshaw

Fi1m's normalised score 50/100 (inferred from the text). 11 April 2013. 

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 the review](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/apr/11/place-beyond-the-pines-review)

## Evening Standard

Fi1m's normalised score 40/100 (inferred from the text). 12 April 2013. 

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 the review](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/the-place-beyond-the-pines-film-review-8569669.html)

## Film Comment — Nicolas Rapold

Fi1m's normalised score 40/100 (inferred from the text). 1 March 2013. 

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 the review](https://www.filmcomment.com/article/the-place-beyond-the-pines-derek-cianfrance-review/)

## The New Yorker — David Denby

Fi1m's normalised score 40/100 (inferred from the text). 25 March 2013. 

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 the review](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/04/01/rough-rides)

## Variety

Fi1m's normalised score 35/100 (inferred from the text). Festival review. 

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 the review](https://variety.com/2013/film/reviews/the-place-beyond-the-pines-1117948245/)

## The Hollywood Reporter — David Rooney

Fi1m's normalised score 30/100 (inferred from the text). 8 September 2012. Festival review. 

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 the review](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/place-beyond-pines-toronto-review-368899/)

## Vulture — David Edelstein

Fi1m's normalised score 30/100 (inferred from the text). 28 March 2013. 

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 the review](https://www.vulture.com/2013/03/movie-review-the-place-beyond-the-pines.html)

## Slant Magazine — Ed Gonzalez

Fi1m's normalised score 20/100 (inferred from the text). 15 March 2013. 

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 the review](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/the-place-beyond-the-pines/)

## Collider — Matt Goldberg

Rating A. 11 April 2013. 

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 the review](https://collider.com/place-beyond-the-pines-review/)

## The Playlist — The Playlist Staff

Rating A. 28 March 2013. 

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 the review](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

Rating 4/5. 29 March 2013. 

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 the review](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-place-beyond-the-pines-review/)

## Eye for Film — Merlin Harries

Fi1m's normalised score 80/100 (inferred from the text). 15 April 2013. 

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 the review](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/the-place-beyond-the-pines-2012-film-review-by-merlin-harries)

## Consequence

Fi1m's normalised score 75/100 (inferred from the text). 5 April 2013. 

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 the review](https://consequence.net/2013/04/film-review-the-place-beyond-the-pines/)

## /Film — Germain Lussier

Rating 7/10. 21 March 2013. 

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 the review](https://www.slashfilm.com/525460/the-place-beyond-the-pines-review-ryan-gosling-and-bradley-cooper-highlight-generational-drama/)

## Paste — Annlee Ellingson

Rating 8.8. 29 March 2013. 

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 the review](https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/the-place-beyond-the-pines)

## The Wrap

Fi1m's normalised score 55/100 (inferred from the text). 28 March 2013. 

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 the review](https://www.thewrap.com/place-beyond-pines-review-ryan-gosling-bradley-cooper-overwrought-daddy-issues-83006/)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Our review: https://film.one/film/the-place-beyond-the-pines.md