The Place Beyond the Pines: Review

The Place Beyond the Pines (2012) Review – 4/12/2013

(NO SPOILERS)

At this point, how can you not be excited to watch The Place Beyond the Pines—directed by Derek Clanfrance—when it stars Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper? I think they should have tried a little harder to get Jessica Alba instead of Eva Mendes, but that’s just me, and Rose Byrne made up for it anyway.

   It seemed like Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper were on the fast track to being C-List Hollywood hacks. Let me explain. The Notebook was one of the first movies that really made me cry, and I have been grateful ever since—I loved that movie! That was the first time I saw Gosling in a film, and he was just charming, and I am in love with Rachel McAdams. But still, it was “just” a tearjerker, chick flick, and it could have been easy for Gosling to keep playing the sweat heart.

   I first saw Cooper in Wedding Crashers, and I must say I often rewound (can you rewind DVDs?) his scenes. He’s just fucking hilarious in that movie. Cooper could have easily let himself be cast into that “bro”/”jock” role that he plays so well forever.

   Gosling was so great and strange in Drive, and Cooper was perfect in Silver Linings Playbook. Needless to say, both dudes have come a long way since their early days, and now they’re badasses, so I was expecting The Place Beyond the Pines to be pretty good. The movie delivered on the goods! Right from the beginning the movie gets exciting, and you obviously begin rooting for the “bad” guy (humans are so predictable). The movie follows Gosling as a carny motorcyclist that finds out he has a child in one of the small towns the carnival stops at. He seems like a guy that doesn’t have much direction in life. He finds some purpose in trying to provide for his family. He gets in trouble; that’s where police officer Cooper comes in. Both of the protagonists (it’s almost like two movies) are faced with moral dilemmas, and Clanfrance does a great job of eliciting a grand drama and emotion from the script.

   Something happens right in the middle of the movie that makes you wonder what the rest of the movie is going to be about, but Place isn’t amateurs at work. I think it was Roger Ebert that once said something like the following: a good movie can’t be too long, and a horrible movie can’t be too short. Some might think this movie could have been a little shorter, but it was a great, epic movie with some good twists and a satisfying ending.

   I especially liked Sean Bobbitt’s DP work. He set up strange scenes where it almost felt like you were Gosling or at least a part of his entourage, and his epic landscape shots play well with the emotional landscapes of the characters. I must say the wardrobe people were pretty awesome (the way Gosling’s character dresses the whole time gives this movie a realistic, raw feel). The acting was good all around. Although the story was a familiar one, there were enough novelties so that it didn’t seem too familiar; plus the acting and, again, Rose Byrne made up for it. And I would just like to say that Ben Mendelsohn seems to be in everything these days (Girls [TV], The Dark Knight Rises, Killing Them Softly, Animal Kingdom, Killer Elite). Keep it up Ben!

   Go watch this movie.

ROSE BYRNE