Movie Review - The Place Beyond the Pines

The Place Beyond the Pines (2013)

Starring Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, Dane DeHaan, Emory Cohen, Rose Byrne, Mahershala Ali, Bruce Greenwood, Harris Yulin, Ben Mendelsohn, and Ray Liotta

Directed by Derek Cianfrance

There's a grandness to the scale of The Place Beyond the Pines that isn't often seen in cinema.  Director and co-writer Derek Cianfrance takes his time building his characters and their arcs.  Some might even say he spends a bit too much time as the three intertwining stories he weaves here slowly unfold in their layers of connection to one another.  While the film isn't perfect, to me The Place Beyond the Pines features storytelling that you typically only get from a great novel and it's a welcome change of pace.

Now, this may seem like a cop out (and it sort of is as I'm trying to get this review done quickly), but I'm not really going to divulge much of the plot here.  If you're not aware of what the film is attempting to do, it's better that you stay in the dark and let things unfold scene by scene.  This isn't to say that The Place Beyond the Pines is particularly surprising or holds twists and turns, but it is told in a unique fashion that may be best kept secret if you're unfamiliar with the director's overall concept.

I will, however, simply state that the film tells the tale of two men -- Luke (Ryan Gosling), a stunt motorcyclist who discovers that he has a young son with Romina (Eva Mendes), a girl he had a fling with over a year ago; and Avery (Bradley Cooper), a first-year cop who also has a young son the same age as Luke's.  Luke and Avery's lives will become interwoven as will the lives of their sons as they grow older (played by Dane DeHaan and Emory Cohen as teens).

I mentioned a "grand scale" in my opening sentence of this review and you shouldn't misinterpret that as being a multi-million dollar Ben Hur-esque special effects-driven type of scope.  Instead, the grandeur comes from the fact that we follow Luke, Avery, and their families over the course of two decades, seeing how their lives change, and how even a spur of the moment decision can affect those around them years down the line.  It's this concept of following multiple characters across generations -- a la Steinbeck's East of Eden -- that makes this movie unique and stand out from the crowd.

With a nice performance from Bradley Cooper anchoring the film [and kudos to Cooper for changing my opinion on him within this past year...he's becoming quite the actor], The Place Beyond the Pines is absolutely worth watching assuming you're ready for a slow-burning type of film.  Then again, Derek Cianfrance's Blue Valentine could've been described in a similar fashion.  While Pines can't hold a candle to the masterpiece that is Blue Valentine (my number one film of 2010...which is also streaming on Netflix, FYI, so watch it immediately), it's still a fine piece of cinema that admittedly sinks into a bit of hokeyness at times (to the detriment of the rawness it's trying to convey), but is still worthy of a watch.

The RyMickey Rating:  B