An Action Movie Without The Dynamism

Rating: 6/10 (8 February 2012)

I was looking forward to watch this movie, as I read really good reviews about it. Today finally, I found the chance to watch it, and I might say I am a little disappointed about it.
The movie starts with a robbery scene. We see Gosling (we'll never catch the name of the character he's playing) in the driver seat waiting for the robbers to finish their job, while listening to the police radio and a game on the radio. When the robbers get to the car, Gosling tries to drive them to a safe place by using the information he hears from the police radio.Finally, he drops the car and the robbers in the stadium where the game that he was listening to has just been over and flees the scene immediately. So thanks to Gosling's intelligence and punctuality, they succeed to run away from the police. There is a beautiful music playing in the back throughout the scene.
So, the movie starts with a really promising scene, where did it lose me? As I implied in the title, the movie lacks the dynamism. By dynamism, I do not mean chase scenes accompanied with loud music, of course. I understand the director 'slowed down' the movie for the audience to connect with the characters but most of the time, at least for me, it made the opposite effect; I got farther away. So I found it hard to connect with Irene or Gosling's character as they seem 'silent' even when they speak to each other. And also, I found it hard to track the connections between Gosling and his criminal entourage.
Overall, one might perfectly say that this is a Ryan Gosling movie where he is the dangerous, brave and at the same time romantic, righteous, good hearted criminal. But this is a movie focusing on a character while it fails to make the connection between the audience and the character.