Movie Review: "The Place Beyond The Pines"

"The Place Beyond The Pines": A-.  The Place Beyond The Pines is a high speed drama told in three distinct acts, all intertwined from beginning to end. Just as he did in 2011's Drive, Ryan Gosling plays his usual "cool as a cucumber" soft-spoken macho man.   Here he is Luke Glanton, a multi-tatooed motorcycle stunt daredevil employed by a traveling circus with its assortment of seedy characters. Glanton fits right in. The nomadic troupe is on the outskirts of Schenectady, in upstate New York, for its annual gig. There he recognizes a familiar face, Roe (Eva Mendes), with whom he had a one night stand a year ago. Luke's world changes when Roe informs him that he is the father of the baby she is holding.

Even though Roe and her infant son, Jacob, live with another man, Luke abruptly quits the circus and takes a job with Robin (Ben Mendelsohn), who owns a local auto repair shop off a dirt road in the woods. Robin tells Luke he can't afford to pay him much, but Luke accepts the offer to get free lodging in Robin's trailer. At first we believe Robin, despite his disheveled appearance, will be good for Luke, as he offers this calming advice: "If you ride like lightening you'll crash like thunder." But after a short while Robin talks Luke into pulling off a bank heist. They will use Luke's bike and Robin's truck for the getaway. Luke needs the dough to be able to re-enter Roe and Jacob's lives. This financial plan is doomed to fail.

The second act focuses on co-leading man Bradley Cooper, who plays Schenectady cop Avery Cross. Cross is on routine patrol when he spots a fugitive careening down a residential street attempting to flee the scene of a crime. A white nail chase ends when the fugitive crashes his vehicle, runs into a house and holes up in a second floor bedroom. Cross, in hot pursuit, calls for backup but doesn't wait for his colleagues to arrive before entering the house with his gun drawn. What transpires in the next five minutes changes Avery's world, just as Luke's was changed in the first act. Heroism, death, politics, police corruption and reparation all come into play before this intense middle stage of the story is over.

The third act of this film, which takes place fifteen years after the close of the second, may not be as frenetic -- or even as successful -- as the first two, but it is nevertheless dramatic. We are re-introduced to the sons of Luke and Avery. Both are troubled teens attending the same Schenectady high school, and are unaware of any connection the two of them indirectly shared when they were infants. I wrote in the first paragraph that the film's three acts are intertwined. We, the viewers, are immediately aware of the boys' overlapping backgrounds, but the boys themselves are not.

The Place Beyond The Pines is being billed as a story about fatherhood and all that it entails. Both Luke and Avery,when afforded an opportunity to change their behaviors for the betterment of their sons, choose instead to continue doing what they've been doing. For Luke that means crime; for Avery it is political ambition. It is as if they can't help themselves or overcome their own DNA. They make decisions which many men in their positions would make. It is that realism and that humanism which rings so true in this film.

The movie is stocked with compelling secondary characters, including Mendes' turn as the hard luck mother, and Ray Liotta as a crooked cop. Both actors are totally absorbed in their respective roles and play key parts in the story.

Another strong point of the film is the sense of place that is Schenectady, a mid-size city of about 65,000 residents. I commend the decision of filmmakers to use a real, as opposed to a fictitious, city.  Incorporating actual entities into a work of fiction obviously renders the story as more authentic.  For example, in Admission (which I reviewed here on April 7), the school for which Tina Fey's character is recruiting is Princeton, not a trumped up name like "Faber College" of Animal House fame. Likewise, the 2010 crime thriller, The Town, refers to the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston, where the story is set.  Schenectady is small enough to make it tough to hold secrets, yet large enough to have a corrupt police force. It is that city which gives meaning to the film's title, as the Mohawk word for "place beyond the pines" is "Schenectady." I just wonder how the real life Chief of Police of the SPD feels about his fictitious counterpart being portrayed as a dirty cop.