The Place Beyond the Pines

Look at that poster!  Doesn't that look badass?  "The Place Beyond the Pines" is badass.  Kinda.  For a little bit.  Much like director Derek Cianfrance's last movie, "Blue Valentine," the movie is sold as something it only partly is.  "Blue Valentine" was marketed as a love story.  The poster and DVD cover both say "Blue Valentine: A Love Story."  But if you watch it, you'll find that the movie is about a guy who loves a girl.  But the girl doesn't love him.  She just needs a nice guy to help raise her baby.  She eventually resents him so much that the relationship becomes two miserable people screaming at each other.  It's a good movie, but not a love story.  "The Place Beyond the Pines" is marketed as an exciting action movie about cops and criminals.  It's not really that at all.  I'm convinced that nobody would go watch a Derek Cianfrance movie if it was presented accurately.  You have to be tricked into watching a good movie!

And "The Place Beyond the Pines" is a good movie.  But it has a couple of big flaws.  I'll get to those soon enough.

The title of the film is the translation of Schenectady, the town in New York where the film takes place.  The movie is told in three parts.  The first part is the closest the movie comes to the advertising.  Ryan Gosling is a motorcycle daredevil who, upon discovering he has a son, begins robbing banks to support the child.  Part two is about a cop played by Bradley Cooper, who discovers corruption among the Schenectady police force.  Part three is about the sons of these two men and how troubled those boys have become.

OK.  My two issues with the movie:

1) Having a movie told in three parts is not a bad thing.  Having a movie told in three incomplete parts is.  It feels as if each part is incomplete.  The first two parts lack a satisfying conclusion, in fact part two ends just when things start to happen.  The result of this half baked trilogy is a loss of momentum.  Each time a section ends and new one begins, all that story progression is lost.  The movie is clunky.

2) Some of the acting is bad.  For the most part, the performances are great.  But in several scenes, in a vain attempt to make dialogue seem naturalistic, the dialogue is improvised.  The problem is two-fold.  First, the actors in this movie are not very good at improv.  They end up just awkwardly repeating each other and coming off like they don't know their lines.  Second, this is not the acting style for all, or even most, of the movie.  As such, it feels incredibly out of place.

Otherwise, "The Place Beyond the Pines" is entertaining enough.  It's a great looking movie.  Cianfrance knows how to make a pretty picture.  I would recommend it, but it's best to know what the movie actually is.  It'll keep you from feeling lied to.

6.5 out of 10