Ryan Gosling

If you like films about rural places and have the patience to sit through slow-paced dramas, you should check out The Slaughter Rule.

I saw a movie called The Believer (also a good flick) a few years ago and was super impressed by the lead Ryan Gosling. I started looking around for other movies he'd done and found The Slaughter Rule, which I like a lot. Veteran actor David Morse is also in it.

You may recognize Gosling from The United States of Leland, The Notebook, and from smaller roles in Remember the Titans and Murder By Numbers. He's an intriguing young actor.

The Slaughter Rule is about a mentor-mentee relationship between a teen and his football coach, which is based somewhat on the directors' (who are brothers) teen experience. Here's what the directors have to say about the film:

Back in high school, in rural Montana, we played on a "Men’s League" team for an odd, lonely coach who had a shaky reputation in town -- our classmates warned us that he was renowned for doing "cup checks" on his players. Though he never once displayed any questionable behavior, we were influenced enough by mere rumor to quit the team. We never really attempted to know this man; we were wary of his friendship. Our contact with him was fleeting -- but haunting.

Later in life, we both felt ashamed of our readiness to believe the worst about this man, a man who was going out of his way to help kids out, and who suffered at their (our) callous & callow reactions. The character of ‘Gid,’ in our film, is that man, given the benefit of the doubt. And ‘Roy’ is a child braver than we were, one willing to allow Gid to get close enough to him to matter. To trust. To understand, possibly to love -- and as is often the result of love-- to harm.
- Alex and Andrew Smith, directors

A dreary Montana winter teaches teenager Roy (Ryan Gosling) how to be a man. First, he loses his father, a possible suicide; then he's cut from his high school football team. So when Gid (David Morse), a pariah in his own hometown, suggests that Roy play for his six-man team, Roy has nothing to lose -- or so he thinks. But all too soon, Roy is overwhelmed by his love for an older woman (Clea Duvall) and pressure from the brusque-but-paternal Gid.

This is the story of Danny Balint (Ryan Gosling), a young Jewish man from New York City struggling with the conflict between his beliefs and his heritage. Balint eventually joins a neo-Nazi organization, rising up the ranks to become a leader in the white supremacy movement. The Believer is a psychological examination into the forces of intolerance, both on the individual and society as a whole.


Teenager Leland Fitzgerald (Ryan Gosling) appears to have everything going for him, including a famous writer father (Kevin Spacey). So, what drove him to kill? It's up to Pearl Madison (Don Cheadle), a teacher who works with inmates, to discover the anger, frustration and fear lurking beneath Leland's otherwise unruffled surface. Before long, Pearl helps Leland discover the truth about the painful past that led him to his excruciating present.


Based on a Nicholas Sparks novel, this drama chronicles an enduring love that withstands both war and disease. It begins in a nursing home, where a man (James Garner) arrives every day armed with a notebook from which he reads stories about a couple, Noah and Allie (played by Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams), to an unresponsive woman (Gena Rowlands). Who are the characters in the book, and why does the stranger insist on reading about them aloud?