Directed by: Derek Cianfrance
Rating: ★★
Supposedly a slow burning crime drama, The Place Beyond the Pines is in actuality a three act Grecian tragedy. The first and second parts of the movie are fairly interesting and well-paced; it’s in the final and obnoxiously coincidental third that the entire film falls completely flat.
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| Ryan Gosling plays Luke Glanton, a motorcyclist who will do anything to care for his son... |
The plot mainly revolves around two characters: Luke Glanton (Gosling), a motorcycle stunt man who learns that he has a son with his ex-lover Romina (Mendes), and Avery Cross (Cooper), an ambitious police officer whose job begins to take a toll on every aspect of his life. These two characters’ lives are linked together by an incident that has ramifications for both them and their families, and it is this unique progression in the story that I really enjoyed.
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| Luke and Romina have a lot to talk about... |
And then the unnecessarily tagged on final act begins. And trust me when I say this part feels like it will never end.
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| Mendes as Romina gets to cry. A lot. |
The scenes involving Gosling and Cooper are the movies best: and if the plot had finished at the end of the second act, the film would have been a hugely enjoyable piece of drama, focusing on how certain events can completely change people’s lives.
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| Everyone's lives are inescapably linked by a chain of events... |
But instead we get the terrible ’fifteen years later’ plot, which, at first, you think might be a five minute denouement, but turns out to be a painfully long and boring third storyline, one which completely smothers the audience to death in a melodramatic sludge that makes you want to choke on your own vomit.
This boring and dreary additional act really does ruin the film’s credibility as a piece of cinema, as it feels completely out of place with the rest of the movie. Not only does it focus on two of the most irritating and obnoxious characters in screen history, it also turns the entire piece into a Grecian tragedy of epically unrealistic proportions, thus ruining the gritty and realistically enjoyable previous two thirds. All boys need their father; that point was obvious before, but in the third act it is taken to hammy levels of awkwardness. Yes, Mr Screenwriter, we get that the film is about parental abandonment and how important fathers are to their sons: you don’t have to smash it into our skulls with a sledgehammer.
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| These two awful characters are at the centre of the film's terrible third act |
It really is such a shame that this tacked on ending even exists, as most of the film is very well directed and looks really good. The bank robbery sequences are exciting and tense, as are the scenes involving corrupt cops. The acting is also very solid from the three main stars (Gosling, Cooper and Mendes) and the segue between the first and second act is brilliantly executed and incredibly effective.
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| The transition between first and second act is by far the movie's best moment... |
It could have been a really decent movie, but because it ultimately destroys itself, I must judge it by the sum of all of its parts. The third act is just so weak and bizarre, and while I was watching it I just kept thinking to myself: ‘why is this movie still going?’ and ‘when will it end?’ And that really isn’t a good thing. At all.
In a nutshell, The Place Beyond the Pines is a poorly constructed and painfully drawn out three act melodramatic Grecian tragedy. It could have been really great, but the realism constructed within the first two thirds is completely destroyed in the final third, an additional act that makes the movie do a complete U-turn in style and tone: from crime drama to cheesy soap opera.
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