Every Ryan Gosling Movie, Ranked

In Bangkok, an exiled American (Gosling) operates a drug-dealing operation masquerading as a Muay Thai boxing club. Gosling's character, Julian, speaks just 17 lines of dialogue in the film, which reunited the actor with his Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn.

"The wallpaper emotes more than Ryan Gosling does in Only God Forgives, an exercise in supreme style and minimal substance." --Peter Debruge, Variety

A quiet teenager (Gosling) murders a disabled boy. Baffled by the crime, the teenager's former teacher (Don Cheadle) struggles to figure out the motive.

"The United States of Leland has a resonance of 'Elephant' without the visual poetry or structural sophistication, or 'American Beauty' without the leavening comedy, but it's neither an insightful nor well-made film." --Liam Lacey, The Globe and Mail

In this fictionalized account of 1940s and '50s Los Angeles, Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) is a powerful mob boss who takes on the LAPD's anti-Mafia task force. Gosling portrays Sergeant Jerry Wooters, a World War II veteran.

"The period thriller Gangster Squad plays like an untalented 12-year-old's imitation of Brian DePalma's 'The Untouchables.'" --David Edelstein, Vulture

After surviving a car crash, Henry Letham (Gosling) tell his psychiatrist (Ewan McGregor) that he's going to commit suicide in a thriller directed by Marc Forster and written by future Game of Thrones co-creator David Benioff.

"Eventually I gave up on meaning and began instead to study the profuse imagery -- and also the flat characters and anchorless performances." --Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly

In this 2000 sports drama set in Alexandria, Virginia in 1971, an African-American football coach (Denzel Washington) leads a newly integrated high-school football team to a perfect record. Gosling, in his first feature as an adult, plays Alan Bosley, a slower player who has an affinity for country music.

"If Remember the Titans is corny, it's unabashedly, even generously so." --Dana Stevens, The New York Times

A Netflix feature from the Russo Brothers (Avengers: Endgame), this 2022 action-thriller adaptation of Mark Greaney's novel finds Gosling playing Courtland Gentry (aka "Sierra Six"), a CIA agent on the run from his former co-worker (played by Chris Evans).

"There are worse things than watching an evil Chris Evans try to murder Ryan Gosling for two hours." —Brian Truitt, USA Today

High-school classmates Richard Haywood (Gosling) and Justin Pendleton (Michael Pitt) murder a woman and attempt to frame the school janitor.

"Ultimately, Murder by Numbers has been reduced to a tease, giving us a hint -- mostly through the fine performances of Gosling, who creates a charismatic sociopath, and Pitt, who's character seems genuinely troubled -- of the kind of relevant social drama it might have been." --Jack Mathews, New York Daily News

Based on the novel of the same name, this 2004 romantic drama tells the tale of a young couple (Rachel McAdams and Gosling) who fall in love in the 1940s. The film became a box-office hit, earning $115.6 million on a $29 million budget.

"You won't necessarily applaud The Notebook's excesses, but its final moments of grace will leave you in a sodden heap on the theater floor." --Connie Ogle, Miami Herald

A struggling songwriter (Rooney Mara) starts dating a fellow musician (Gosling) while having an affair with a record producer (Michael Fassbender) in Terrence Malick's 2017 drama set in Austin, Texas.

"There's plenty of intrigue to the dissonance of a hard-rock lifestyle and Malick's gentle touch, but much of the movie's potential is overshadowed by the impulses of a director unwilling to get there." --Eric Kohn, IndieWire

A New York real estate tycoon (Gosling) is linked to multiple murders and the disappearance of his wife in this 2010 crime drama inspired by the alleged murderer Robert Durst. (The latter was so impressed by the film that he offered to speak with director Andrew Jarecki, who turned the resulting interviews into the acclaimed HBO miniseries The Jinx.)

"The film ends up wrestling itself into a corner, though it's saved by a corrosive central performance from Ryan Gosling and a disconcertingly hypnotic feel." --Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News

A high-school football player (Gosling) joins a Montana-based six-man football team in this 2002 indie drama also starring David Morse and Clea Duvall.

"This bleak debut feature from writer-directors Alex and Andrew Smith would be all but impossible to sit through if it weren't for Ryan Gosling and Clea Duvall." --Hazel-Dawn Dumpert, L.A. Weekly

Directed and co-written by George Clooney, this 2011 political drama follows a rising campaign manager (Gosling) who gets entrenched in a scandal during a tightly contested Ohio presidential primary.

"Some elements of the film are too melodramatic, but there's not a bad performance in it -- look at the cast and that's not surprising -- and Gosling is outstanding." --Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic

After a wealthy engineer (Anthony Hopkins) beats an attempted-murder rap, a cocky district attorney (Gosling) is relentless in his pursuit of justice.

"The main interest here is the juxtaposing of Gosling's Method acting with Hopkins's more classical style, a spectacle even more mesmerizing than the settings." --Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

A motorcycle stuntman (Gosling) becomes a bank robber to support his wife and son in this 2012 crime film from Blue Valentine director Derek Cianfrance that also stars Bradley Cooper.

"The acting is first-rate. Gosling masterfully fills in Luke's motivational blanks, and Cooper nicely handles Avery's evolution from idealist to manipulator." --Calvin Wilson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

A recently divorced middle-aged man (Steve Carell) learns the art of picking up women from a younger womanizer (Gosling). Gosling was nominated for a Golden Globe for best actor in a comedy.

"The movie's biggest surprise is the revelation of Gosling as cunning comedian." --Mary Pols, Time

After years of seclusion, Lars Lindstrom (Gosling) falls in love with a woman he meets on the internet. The catch? She's actually a life-size doll. This 2007 film was nominated for an Academy Award for its screenplay.

"Gosling's performance is a small miracle, not only because he's so completely open as a man who's essentially shut off, but because he changes and grows so imperceptibly before our eyes." --Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post

Holland March (Gosling), an alcoholic private investigator, and a hired enforcer, Jack Healy (Russell Crowe), search for a missing teenage girl in Shane Black's action comedy set in 1970s Los Angeles.

"The modest pleasures of The Nice Guys lie not in following the wiggy story twists but in watching Gosling and Crowe mix it up and mess everything up." --Stephanie Zacharek, Time

Gosling plays stuntman Colt Seavers opposite Emily Blunt in an action-filled rom-com very loosely based on the 1980s TV drama of the same name. Despite positive reviews, the film opened with disappointing box office numbers to kick of 2024's summer movie season.

"On top of being a no-holds-barred action movie, The Fall Guy is also the best studio rom-com since Crazy Rich Asians. Gosling and Blunt make for an intoxicating duo, and Gosling really runs away with the rest of the movie, too." —Fletcher Peters, The Daily Beast

Daniel Balint (Gosling) is a former Jewish yeshiva student who joins a neo-Nazi movement in this 2001 Sundance winner based on a true story.

"The film's greatest strength undeniably lies in Gosling's revelatory portrayal of Danny." --Steve Davis, Austin Chronicle

This stylish 2011 crime thriller tells the story of a Hollywood stunt man (Gosling) who moonlights as a getaway driver until a million-dollar heist goes wrong.

"Few actors working today could make emotional sense of such a protean character, but Ryan Gosling does so with calm authority. He's a formidable presence in a film that grabs your gaze and won't let go except for moments when you can't help but look away." --Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal

Easily Gosling's biggest box office hit to date with over $1.4 billion in grosses, this 2023 sensation finds Gosling playing the iconic Mattel character Ken opposite Margot Robbie's Barbie for writer-director Greta Gerwig.

"It's a riotously entertaining candy-coloured feminist fable that manages simultaneously to celebrate, satirise and deconstruct its happy-plastic subject." —Mark Kermode, The Observer

This 2015 Oscar winner focuses on the 2007 housing-market crash. Gosling portrays Jared Vennett, an egotistical salesman who serves as the movie's narrator.

"The film packs in so much information and comedy, it would be fun to see it twice: not just to take in what it has to tell us, but also to laugh all over again." --Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times

A high-school dropout (Gosling) and a pre-med student (Michelle Williams) try to save their failing marriage.

"Gosling and Williams have the most palpable chemistry of any screen couple this year, never striking a false note in this achingly tender tale of a love that implodes before our eyes." --Claudia Puig, USA Today

Set 30 years after the original, this 2017 sci-fi sequel stars Gosling as K, an LAPD blade runner tasked with preventing a war between replicants and humans.

"There's a humanity in Gosling's K we haven't quite seen before in this world of frowning people and weirdos. And it's those little, subtle inflections that makes Blade Runner 2049 a success." --Mike Ryan, Uproxx

The title refers to the first man to walk on the moon—Neil Armstrong—and he's played by Gosling in this 2018 biopic about the famed Apollo 11 astronaut by director Damien Chazelle, re-teaming with the star of his previous movie, La La Land.

"It's a beautifully made film, with an impeccable lead performance from Ryan Gosling as the sober, sensitive astronaut. Yet it's also a film which takes elegant flight but stalls across its extended closing sequences." —Fionnuala Halligan, Screen Daily

A young inner-city middle-school teacher (Gosling) befriends a student after she learns he's addicted to drugs. The role earned Gosling his first Oscar nomination.

"The audacity of making an inner-city drama in which the white-male authority figure is the crackhead finds its equal in Gosling's already legendary performance, a high-wire act that's gutsiest for its unconscionable charm." --Rob Nelson, Village Voice

A struggling jazz pianist (Gosling) and an aspiring actress (Emma Stone) fall in love while pursuing their dreams in this Oscar-winning musical. Gosling earned another Academy Award nomination, but he ultimately lost to Casey Affleck.

"For all its borrowing and bricolage, La La Land never feels like a backward-looking or unoriginal work. Even when not every one of its risks pays off the way that first song does, this movie is bold, vital, funny, and alive." --Dana Stevens, Slate