Cast: Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Dane DeHaan, Rose Byrne, Eva Mendes, Ray Liotta
Directed by: Derek Cianfrance
So it has definitely been awhile since my last post and it's kind of odd that I'm coming back on a Friday to launch this blog back up again, but school is officially over with now, I've watched a movie that I was hyped to see, and I want to write about it! :)
The Place Beyond the Pines caught my attention with its casting of Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper. I thought Cooper was great in Silver Linings and I quite enjoyed his role in Limitless, so I was curious if this movie would expand his blip on my radar. Drive is one of my faves and Ryan Gosling is quickly becoming one of my favorite actors. I was also fortunate enough to get a hold of the screenplay well before the film was released and it was so good I put it down so I could enjoy the rest of the film without knowing what was going to happen.
If you haven't watched this movie, I suggest you do so. I'm only saying that now because if you're reading this before watching, I advise you to stop here. There is a major spoiler and for the sake of analyzing the film, I have to discuss it.
One more thing, this is my first review back and it's going to be quite long. I'll get more concise when I get back into the swing of doing this.
Review
The film starts off really well. The cinematography is great, the setting is dark, Gosling is tatt'd up, and the dialogue is real. I really liked where this was heading. Luke (Gosling) finds out that he has a baby with a girl named Romina (Mendes), a fling from his past. Instead of leaving town like he'd planned, he decides to stay and be in the baby's life. Luke is a motorcycle stunt rider at a carnival, but he has to quit in order to be with his son. Enter the mentor character of Robin. Robin is impressed when watches Luke riding his motorbike through the woods. Robbing a few banks in his day, he offers Luke a place to stay and suggests that he try it. Having very little options elsewhere, Luke takes Robin's advice and begins robbing banks. This is where the film takes off. The scenes of Luke robbing banks are very intense and realistic. Everything seems to be going well, he scores a few bank robberies, and then he gets greedy. He wants to do two in one day. Knowing how most movies go, we get the sense that the first bit of conflict is going to arise out of this. What we didn't know was that the director, Derek Cianfrance, has a huge set of balls. He really did the unthinkable.
Luke dies.
Yeah, our main character dies 45 minutes into the film. WHAT? When I read this in the screenplay I had to do a double take. Did he actually just- no, he didn't- ok yeah, he definitely just died. What now?
The story continues following the police officer that shoots him, Avery (Cooper). After being injured by a gun wound from Luke, Avery is taken back to Romina's house by four other cops to find the stolen money. DIRTY COPS. They want to keep it for themselves and due to Rominas mother's illegal status in the country, no warrant is necessary. Avery wants none of it. He tries to rat out the cops, he tries to catch them on his voice recorder, and then he goes to his dad. His dad is a judge. I didn't think of it at first, but is it really believable that four dirty police officers would go to Avery, knowing that his dad is a judge and that Avery graduated from law school, but chose to be a cop to do the right thing in the line of duty instead of hiding behind a desk? I don't think so. Then the story takes another leap.
15 years later.
Ummmm, ok.
Now the story follows Avery's son AJ, who becomes friends with Luke's son Jason (DeHaan). I don't want to cut this section short, but I will. AJ is a bad kid and he's into drugs. Jason doesn't really know much about his father and has no idea that AJ's father killed him. Jason buys AJ drugs, they party, and then Jason gets curious about his father for some reason. He looks him up on the internet for the first time. He finds out who Robin is, and one of the best scenes in the movie is when he goes and meets him. Robin sits down with him and shows him some of his dad's old things. I'll get into this later, but for now I'll just allude to the emotional connection attached to it. It was great. Jason finds out about Avery, takes a gun, drives him out to the woods, holds the gun at him point blank, takes his wallet, and runs off. We see Jason ride off at the end of the film as he purchases a motorbike just like his dad's.
PROS
Pines was something completely unique from other films. Each new act was about a new character, connected to the character in the act prior. I've mentioned many times that taking enormous time jumps in movies can really disconnect the viewer from the protag, but the formula of this film makes it work. We're not following a character, we're following a timeline of these two families. The structure of this film allowed for us to connect to two different generations and this hardly ever happens. I really liked that.
The cinematography and acting were both spectacular.
The scene where Jason meets with Robin, 15 years after his father's death, is my favorite scene in the entire movie. We've followed his father's last days and viewed the love he had for his son. When Jason finally discovers this and is given the green glasses his father playfully placed on him when he was a baby, I was happy. I felt the connection. It provoked thought in my head, especially because I've studied history and the importance of its preservation.
The director's courage to kill off the film's main character and Ryan Gosling's courage to take a role where he dies before Act II.
CONS
AJ, Avery's son, really annoyed me. Maybe it was the accent. I didn't like his character at all. Maybe it was the acting? Not sure.
The third act fell apart for me a little bit. This is possibly because of AJ, but the final showdown between Jason and Avery, although very real and well acted, didn't have much of an impact on me. Maybe if he would have killed Avery it would have sparked something, but he didn't, and the scene just kind of died.
At times the direction was too slow. The pace could have been a little faster and 20 minutes could have been cut out of this film easily. The cinematography was great, but it could have been cut down a little bit to speed up the pace and have the story moving forward in a quicker and more entertaining speed.
Conclusion
Pines was a film I looked forward to. I really liked the structure because it was unique and allowed for us to explore a story through two generations. This eccentric form of storytelling allowed for me to connect on an emotional level to two families as opposed to the standard connection I'd usually have to an individual protagonist. It was well written, well directed, and the acting was great. It's not the type of movie that will make $100 million, but it's a great movie to provoke thought and it's easy to get attached to its story.
7.5/10
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