Too long by half

Rating: 5/10 (4 October 2011)

How long should it take to tell a story? This film had the potential to be a lean, mean machine, but the director opted for some sort of Euro vibe instead, with lots of long, mood-setting sequences, several of them involving drives where no one speaks. The result was a slow-paced film that failed to build much tension most of the time and, in my view, didn't succeed as a thriller.
Nevertheless, the performances were very good, especially the senior criminals, who humanized their ilk the way that Clint Eastwood humanized the characters in Westerns in The Unforgiven. The central character is a type that's hard to build a film around, and Ryan Gosling does an admirable job with the role.
Bottom line: Good story, interesting characters, just too slow with too much superfluous material.