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Quickie Review - The Place Beyond The Pines

A Gosling film I despised. Never thought those words would come out of me.

Painfully dull and conceptually flawed, this film takes everything good about two of today's best actors and strips them of their identity. What we are left with is caricatures of every good and bad person and how their relationships with their sons created their flawed existences. I'm a huge Gosling fan and this is easily his most emotionally empty role, despite his attempts. Cooper shines slightly brighter, but barely. The biggest problem is the attempt to create a Hollywoodesque Greek tragedy, but the movie is so flat wihin the final act, that we know longer care about the leads. The American dream and the circle will remain unbroken, even when it is.

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