Directed by Derek Cianfrance

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes

Grade: A

The Place Beyond the pines is really three movies in one. Three different stories, though related, are told, but not interweaving. The first third is a bit of a modern crime noir, second third is a police corruption tale, and the last third is the story of two wounded sons doing battle for their fathers’ sins. That it succeeds in all three modes is pretty remarkable. It teases us with its ambitions for a while, starting out as a minimalistic, character driven story and ending on an epic scale spanning two generations. Director Derek Cianfrance, who last gave us Blue Valentine (also starring Ryan Gosling), a toned down horribly depressing drama about a doomed marriage, sets his sights much higher this time.

The movie starts out with mumbling, stoic tough guy and circus daredevil, Luke (Gosling) discovering he has a one year old son. He makes the decision to do the right thing and stick around for the kid, even though he’s not really wanted. His baby momma Romina (Eva Mendes) still has feelings for him but her new man is not happy with Luke’s intrusion into their lives. Luke takes up robbing banks in order to support his son. Gosling knows this world well, he knows in this case it’s a lot more important what he doesn’t say rather than the dialogue that is used. Quietly mumbling his way through scenes helps shape this character and the bleakness of the world. Sometimes the script forgets that and gives moments of too much clarity, like when his bank-robbing friend tell him “If you ride like lightning you’re going to crash like thunder.” This comes from a character that smokes and drinks his way through life when he’s not driving the getaway truck. It’s not a terrible thing, and maybe it’s needed, but it feels a little forced. Soon, though, that obviously foreshadowing quote comes to fruition. A bank job goes wrong and has tragic consequences for Luke.

The second story is about hero cop Avery (Bradley Cooper), struggling with both a physical injury and severe damage to his psyche. He’s not quite so sure he’s the hero everybody thinks he is. His new role gets him into the inner circle and he quickly finds out about the corruption within his station. The crooked cops, led by Deluca (Ray Liotta at his Ray Liottaest) attempt to turn him to their cause, but Avery is too moral of a guy to be seduced. Or at least, that’s what we think initially. Avery, with the help of his Judge and politically powerful father, uses the situation and his new found knowledge to gain his own political influence and launch a career. Cooper plays this well, as someone who is a good man but too politically minded to ever truly be a morally centered person. Cooper’s recently gotten a lot of accolades for his acting and has come a long way from being the go-to asshole in an R-rated comedy. His work here is some of the more subtle I’ve seen from him.

The last section of the film jumps forward in time and tells the story of the two men’s sons unwillingly, and in one case unknowingly, dealing with the consequences of their father’s choices. The two teenagers, AJ and Jason, both seniors in high school, are drifting towards dark paths, though in different ways. One is withdrawn and isolated while the other is angry and sadistic. They fight, manipulate, and seek only to hurt each other, for reasons that are much clearer to us than them.

The three sections build towards a confrontation which ends in a confession, an apology, and if not exactly anything even remotely happy, there is at least an acceptance. This is, after all, a pretty noir world we’re in, and by definition we can’t get a happy ending. What we do get is a detailed, fully realized world populated by people who are in a constant struggle to find meaning and hope amidst the pain of an increasingly bleak existence and the city of Synecdoche has never looked so drab and lifeless. But the film is not interested in making you abandon all hope either, it wants to leave that possibility alive that things can finally work out, probably because that will make it all the more devastating when it doesn’t. Through everything the movie attempts to do and all the genres it encompasses, it finally settles on the good old-fashioned American epic. The mantra “Go west, young man” is at the center of its resolution, both literally and figuratively. One could argue that The Place Beyond the Pines tries to do too much, to be too much, but it’s that reckless ambition that defines the great American film, isn’t it?

Go see this movie!