The Place Beyond the Pines

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, Rose Byrne, Ray Liotta, Olga Merediz, Ben Mendelsohn
Directed by: Derek Cianfrance
Rating: R
Genre: Drama, Crime
2013

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A motorcycle stunt driver (Ryan Gosling) starts robbing banks to provide for his young son.


Review:

Tim: The Place Beyond the Pines felt a little pretentious to me. I'm not trying to be overly harsh on director Derek Cianfrance, because I love his attempt to make a grown-up, mature movie. We need more adult films to counteract all the superhero and action movies in Hollywood. However, despite my belief that we need these kinds of films, I struggled a little with this film. It just felt a little too artsy to me, like it was trying so hard to project this image of being "better" than other movies. I felt like Cianfrance made decisions in this film to make it artsy, rather than making the decisions that would lead to the best overall film. This film isn't bad, but I did not especially care for it.

First off, there's no reason for this film to span 140 minutes. The story and the characters just aren't interesting enough to hold our attention for this length. Even 10 minutes shorter would have made a difference to me. This is a long movie, and it's occasionally too slow.

I like the story here, but I didn't love the execution. We are introduced to Ryan Gosling's character, a motorcycle stunt driver. He reconnects with a woman, Eva Mendes, who he slept with some time ago. He learns that he got her pregnant, and he has a son. With this knowledge, and the desire to provide for her and his son, he decides to start robbing banks. This story is interesting, exciting, and engaging. In the early stages of this film, I was definitely intrigued. I didn't love how this was all portrayed, but I was tracking. The film then takes a different approach, switching the story halfway through to Bradley Cooper's cop. The story completely focuses on him for quite a while, before fast forwarding a number of years to bring the two stories together. This is a really cool idea, and I love the attempt to tell a challenging story. In some ways, this results in a beautiful story about the sins of the fathers and how they impact their sons. In theory, this is all awesome. In practice, Cianfrance gives us a plodding film that takes too long to get where it is going. It felt a little predictable towards the end. The movie just came across as Cianfrance working so, so hard to impress everyone who watched it. The image I got was that this film just tried so hard to be dark, and slow, and powerful- like the chief concern here was making an artsy film, not necessarily a great one. Cianfrance certainly delivered the movie he was trying to make- unfortunately that means The Place Beyond the Pines accomplished his goals, without actually entertaining the audience.

The cast was fairly good, but very few standouts. Ryan Gosling is a great actor, and I thought he gave a very strong performance here. I love that Gosling is so focused on avoiding the bigger budget films, instead remaining choosey with these smaller, more independent/artsy projects. While this film didn't quite work out for him, his performance was very strong. Bradley Cooper is fine, but he's not as good of an actor as Gosling, and it shows. The movie slows down when his story takes over. I thought Eva Mendes was average- she really didn't do anything special in this film. Rose Byrne was far too underutilized. Ray Liotta was fine in a supporting role. I thought Ben Mendelsohn actually gave a great supporting turn.

Now, not surprisingly, this film got great reviews. People can claim it's a challenging film that requires you to think, that Cianfrance made a slightly inaccessible film, but that's a good film. Lots of people will claim to love this movie, and I think at least some percentage of those will claim to love it because this is the kind of film they are "supposed to love". I don't like that approach to movies- if you like it, you like it, if you don't, please don't pretend that you do. I thought this film was a decent attempt, but it was flawed, and I certainly did not love it. I know some people will rail against me for it, but I think this is an overrated movie.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6.5


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