Less of a film than I had hoped it would be

Rating: 6/10 (30 November 2011)

It had a lot of elements I enjoyed, and I was entertained throughout - but after seeing it I can't really grasp it's extreme popularity. The very story feels incredibly tiny and insignificant. We meet a getaway driver, he kinda falls in love with a girl, then he gets in some trouble - the end. It was basically like they just wanted to make a movie and threw a screenplay together. A lot about this movie is just plain off.
Excluding some odd song picks, the dialog is really plain, at times even cringe worthy. I assume it was mainly by choice, as the acting style is also quite off in an oddly stylized fashion. Gosling and Mulligan makes it work, Oscar Isaac, who plays Mulligan's husband, isn't as lucky and delivers his uninspired lines quite awfully.
We get some set pieces that might seem important, primarily the scene in which Gosling, hidden under a prosthetic mask, seeks revenge. However it turns out the mask wasn't needed at all, and very little is done with it, but the visual vibe is unsettling enough. Brooks get a lot of credit for his performance, I find him rather mediocre. Many people in this were way worse than him, and he certainly out-acts Pearlam, who is quite poor.
At the end of the day I wanted to like it more than I ended up doing. Though well made enough, a lot of it felt plain "simple". Still managed to pull me a long, and it did get my blood pumping a few times, so it's certainly a good enough film - but I wouldn't go further than that.