The Place Beyond The Pines***
Blue Valentine director Derek Cianfrance’s second film, The Place Beyond The Pines, offers a similar moving and volatile storyline of familiar relationships as his latter. The comparison is made all the more apparent by the reappearance of ‘man of the moment’ Ryan Gosling who has made an art of brooding in quiet, pained expression of a misunderstood bad boy trying to do good – typecast again to fans’ delight in this.
The Place Beyond The Pines begins with a moderate pace to brew the characters’ emotions and regrets. It quickly mutates into a whole different commercial-style ‘cops minus robbers’ affair at the end, almost tainting the rich indie quality Cianfrance is apt at producing, and perhaps being a little too ambitious for its own good, cultivating in a contrived ending.
Gosling is tattooed bad boy Luke, a travelling motorcycle stunt rider who turns to robbing banks to provide for his newborn son after discovering he’s fathered a child with his former lover Romina (Eva Mendes). Sadly, this new employment puts him on a fatal collision course with ambitious rookie cop Avery (Bradley Cooper) who subsequently becomes both hero and snitch in a corrupt police department. Years later these men’s actions have dire consequences on the children who succeed them.
Cianfrance’s film feels like a satisfactory combination of two potentially influential films knitted together, and although the arc is clearly about following the repercussions of one man’s actions, the powerful first part that Gosling delivers in intensity and earnest but misguided folly merely highlights how lacking the latter half is. This is possibly due to the change in pace into some kind of teen angst affair – even though Dane DeHaan (of Chronicle fame) as Luke’s grownup son Jason is compelling as a loner child scorned.
Cooper who is proving his worth in more serious, meatier roles has little beyond the stereotypical ‘good cop verse bad’ to play with in this, even though there is a dramatic change in his character. In comparison to the attention to detail given to Luke (and run-time dedicated to do so), Avery’s motives feel a little less fleshed out and are re-enacted in snippets, supposedly meant to add up to depict one conflicting personality and what drives him. This isn’t helped by the plot’s attention being diverted to the sons too soon, so we miss what makes Avery’s faults so paramount to his son’s troubled development. The dots are too conveniently joined with the premeditated and almost smug conclusion.
That said anyone with offspring can relate to this film on a raw level, how all good intentions input into a child’s upbringing can go either way so it’s a poignant and troubling watch in this respect and it’s where its power ultimately lies. The Place Beyond The Pines is obviously a labour of love for director, actor and character alike. As a viewer it requires investment in its message of how crucial decisions are in moulding impressionable beings, more than just a passing interest in the A-list cast to really make its mark.
3/5 stars
By @FilmGazer
by lgileskeddie
Category: Drama
Tags: Blue Valentine, Bradley Cooper, Chronicle, Dane DeHaan, Derek Cianfrance, Eva Mendes, Ryan Gosling, The Place Beyond The Pines