The Place Beyond the Pines Reviews

Following their critical success 'Blue Valentine', Derek Cianfrance and Ryan Gosling decided to give it another shot with this movie which got a lot of buzz before its release. To be honest, even though I did like 'Blue Valentine', I thought it was slightly overrated but, here, they came up with something completely different which was pretty neat. Indeed, the most interesting thing about this movie was its peculiar structure. Basically, instead of using some flashbacks or some hyperlink gimmick, they basically gave us 3 different tales told chronologically but they were still linked somehow together making one intriguing story. Personally, I really enjoyed this construction and it was also a really interesting and unexpected approach to kill their top billing actor within 50 minutes. Still, I have to admit that this way of telling these stories also had its downside. Above all, even though those tales combined made for something really worthwhile, on their own, they didn't work so well. Basically, each time I was starting to get to know one of the characters, they would move towards another character and the biggest victim was definitely Eva Mendes. Indeed, even though she gave one of her best performances, she barely had anything to do here. To conclude, even though it wasn't a complete success, it was still a very strong drama with some solid performances and it is definitely worth a look. 

Wow what a movie, I completely surprised. The character appearances and presentations were like Alfie's movie style. Just remember 'Psycho' where the movie begins with one female character and slowly transforms it into another male psycho character. There were no psychos in this movie, it was pure dramatised for the time being the characters constantly gives the screen space to another and new character. Thus, the new story begins with the new character, more like the layers within.

The movie opens with Ryan Gosling-Eva Mendes combo and transforms to Bradley Cooper-Rose Byrne and then again to two young boys. In their limited time span both Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper gives one of the best performances ever, the young and hot Hollywood property at present. Cine lover will find it like the clash of the titans. Rose Byrne does not get much but Eva Mendes delivers much better performance. However this movie should not be missed, looks like we should watch out for this director's future projects.

This kinda movies are not suitable for the sequels and prequels but desperately I want one and I know I won't get it. A must see movie and I highly recommend it to everyone though be aware of the movie pace.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

The Place Beyond the Pines starts out following Luke Glanton, a stuntman who turns to robbing banks to support his former lover and her baby. Then, for the second act, the focus abruptly shifts to Avery Cross, an ambitious detective in a corrupt precinct. And then the third act follows Avery's son fifteen years later.
When I first read the plot summary for this movie, I was expecting the stories of the detective and the criminal to be told in parallel. But instead, it tells three entirely separate stories one after the other. So imagine my confusion when Ryan Gosling's storyline ended abruptly early in the film, and Bradley Cooper's storyline was then resolved equally quickly!
It may be because of this story layout that the movie felt very long indeed. It's 134 minutes, but it feels more like three hours! It has a rather slow, methodical pace, so each section feels like a whole movie in itself.
Not to mention, each story is less interesting than the last. Despite Ryan Gosling's characteristically wooden performance, his character is such a good parent that I really did start to root for him and felt he should absolutely be a part of the baby's life. But, on the other hand, I couldn't care less about Avery's son's story, centred around drugs.
In short, while it's well written and does have its moments, on the whole, its jarring narrative structure makes it seem increasingly longwinded.

My rating: 60%

The Place Beyond the Pine becomes two films, and does so quite simply by creating a story that reaches an appropriate point to make the shift, setting up two very different halves to one film.

Luke Glanton is a struggling stunt rider, who after finding out he has a son tries to settle down and provide a life. Struggling to do so, Luke turns to robbing banks in order to give his son a better life. As Luke grows more and more daring, his life is inevitably put at risk changing the lives of everyone involved.

Having billable stars like Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper is an asset to any film, especially a film that knows to present them both as the top star when necessary. Cooper and Gosling play vastly different characters, on opposite sides of the law and opposite sides of the film. The first half being about Gosling and his descent into chaos and robbery and how that affected the life of his son, the life of the people around. The second half being about Cooper’s character and how one traumatic event can change a cop’s life, whether it be at home or at work. Ultimately The Place Beyond the Pines becomes a film about loss and gain and how one get both from a particular situation depending on what side we are on.

It is at times a messy film; some of the action is blurry and almost gives you a headache. Those scenes are a total misfire for a film that was so dependent on ramping up the intensity for the characters involved. It also became messy during the third act, when it became a generational piece about one person struggles can span generations and have an effect on their children without even really realizing it does. It becomes sloppy in its transition from bank heist film, to hero cop film, to lonely teenager film. The bad part is, it never needed to be sloppy, clocking in at 140 minutes it had enough time to transition well and place all the meaningful scenes where they needed to be. Yes, there were meaningful scenes in all three acts, but most of them came in the first two, which made the third a tad tedious and too ambitious to drive home the overall point of the film.

This is not to say the film is bad, Dane DeHaan is great in the third act. His desperation, lack of ambition and eventual self destruction were well executed by the young actor but they came during a too little too late period of the film, when all the potential poignancy this film had to offer had already been delivered. We understood the struggles the family went through, the struggles Cooper’s character went through and so when DeHaan got his chance to shine it was all just second-hand and merely identical to the same struggles and emotions that were dealt with in the first act.

It is still a very enjoyable and real film, which is very emotional at times. It just never sacrifices it’s overzealous ambition to tell a better story, or to simply refine what was already a story worth telling.