The Place Beyond the Pines is a place you do not need to visit anytime in the near future. Director Derek Cianfrance and Ryan Gosling (Drive, Half-Nelson) team up for the first time since the 2010 instant classic Blue Valentine. I can honestly say that they recaptured their magic for the first third of this movie, but ***spoiler alert***then Cianfrance went and killed off Gosling. After that, this movie tail-spun into the ground. The Place Beyond the Pines is told in three stories (all roughly 45-55 minutes). In this review, I’m going to spoil everything. So either you’ll stop reading now and see the movie on your own, or you’ll heed my advice and read this post instead of seeing this wreck of a film.

I couldn’t have been more pleased for the first hour of The Place Beyond the Pines. Gosling shined while Bradley Cooper (Limitless, Silver Linings Playback) and Ray Liotta (Goodfellas, Narc) didn’t even appear. Gosling plays Luke, a daredevil motorcyclist who tours the country, performing in what looks like some sort of back lot of state and county fairs. Luke is very much a loner. He is quiet, observant, impulsive, and fearless. So when Romina (Eva Mendes – Out of Time, Hitch) shows up out of the blue at a New York fair, Luke becomes suspicious. The two had a one-night stand when Luke fair was touring in the same city a year prior. It turns out she got pregnant and has a three-month-old son named Jason. While Eva doesn’t want anything from Luke, Luke wants to be a father to Jason. Luke isn’t committed to much in his world, but he knows he has to assume some responsibility for his son. So he quits his job at the fair and tries to become a part of Eva and Jason’s lives. Kofi (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali (Predators, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) is Eva’s significant other and doesn’t want Luke in their lives. Since Eva, her mother, and Jason all live in Kofi’s house, Eva more or less says what Kofi says and does go. But once Luke knows he has a son, he cannot get his son out of his mind. His need to protect and provide for his son ultimately leads to his character’s demise.

Cooper’s performance as a street cop named Avery was just as powerful. For me, once Luke was killed, there was an emotional letdown. A “what do I care about this movie now?” attitude. In a way, Cooper had no chance. But I like Cooper a lot. He is a talented actor. The characters he has played in four most recent movies (The Hangover, Limitless, Silver Linings Playback, and this movie) were all very different and I thought he was a master in each of these films. In The Place Beyond the Pines, Cooper’s Avery is instantly called a hero after killing the bank robber who had been terrorizing the community over the previous four months. Avery is shot in the leg while killing Luke, and we see him go through extensive rehab. Avery then is made aware of the darker side of the law as some of the other guys on the force try to show him what he “earned” for taking a gunshot in the line of duty. While his colleagues hoot and holler as they take the bank money that Luke had stolen from the bank and given to Romina, Avery takes the opposite approach. Instead of using his force to get what he wants, he instead wants to blue the whistle on the entire police force, taking into account the short-term and long-term ramifications of this decision.

The third story follows the relationship between Luke’s son Jason and Avery’s son AJ when they are in the same prep school as sixteen-year-olds. Unfortunately, their story is kind of cliche and was my least favorite of the three. In all honesty, I would have preferred that Cianfrance had ended it in some other way, though I understand why he did what he did. He wanted to show how each individual’s decision can come full circle.

Cianfrance was way too ambitious with this movie. While I appreciate his drive and what he was trying to do, this movie was too much for him. He’s still a relative newcomer. There is nothing that says a director with limited experience can’t make a good movie (heck Cianfrance did it just two years prior with the unbelievable Blue Valentine), but maybe with the critical acclaim of that movie plus Gosling, Cooper, Mendes, and Liotta all at his disposal put too much pressure on the man. I loved the first 45 minutes of this movie. I didn’t like the second 45 minutes. I hated the last 45 minutes. Before the third story started developing, I was ready to leave. I had no interest in watching Luke’s son and Avery’s son interact and then figure out who their fathers were and how they had impacted each other’s lives.

As I reviewed this movie a few days later, I didn’t dislike it as much as I did. I appreciate it much more. It’s admirable for Cianfrance to want to show how our actions can impact us immediately, in the foreseeable future, and the non-foreseeable future. For Cianfrance to show this, he had to make this movie for two and a half hours and tell it through three stories. It doesn’t make me like it anymore or make me wonder any less what this movie could have been with Gosling as this character for an entire film. However, I like how each main character weighed the pros and cons of their decisions against each other. Each of the main characters has a strong moral compass. Each character went through the process of what they could gain in the now versus what might happen in the future. Luke and Avery were very, very different from each other, but they were both fathers of infants. Both were willing to do whatever they could to protect their son. The characters were strong. The story was promising. The execution is what failed.

Plot 7.5/10
Character Development 7.5/10
Character Chemistry 7/10 (Gosling and Cooper shared the screen for all of 10 seconds)
Acting 8.5/10
Screenplay 7/10
Directing  6.5/10
Cinematography 7/10
Sound 7/10
Hook and Reel 9/10 (I love Gosling, love the opening scene)
Universal Relevance 9/10 (actions and consequences are pretty universal, our future consequences based on our efforts of today aren’t shown enough in the film…at least not like this)
76%

Movies You Might Like If You Liked This Movie

• Out of the Furnace
• Prisoners
• Drive
• Blue Ruin
• End of Watch