Review of The Place Beyond the Pines (2013) by Stefan N — 21 Apr 2014

With a talented cast lined up, The Place Beyond the Pines sounded like an appealing feature.

The Place Beyond the Pines has most of the importance in the film resting on its script and the cast working with it. While these elements are successful, some aspects of The Place Beyond the Pines are not as good.

For one thing, the story in The Place Beyond the Pines is a rather basic one. This wouldn't be such a problem if not for all the focus shifts that the film takes. The first part of the story chronicles Luke Glanton while the next part puts all its focus on Avery Cross who has just recently been introduced to the story. A little bit of time later, The Place Beyond the Pines cuts to fifteen years later. All these constant jumps in the story make the experience a little bit tedious because the focus keeps on shifting, and while the first part of the story is interesting, the second part isn't so much. The third part of the story in The Place Beyond the Pines which takes place 15 years after when the course and meaning of the story has changed and the importance now rests on the children Luke and Avery who get involved with each other unaware of the occurrences that have happened between both their fathers. While The Place Beyond the Pines has interesting characters to it and the way that the story ties them all together is an ambitious concept, it leaves the focus of the story constantly shifting. And for a film with a slow pace to keep on doing that over the course of its 140 minute running time simply isn't the most viable source of entertainment or originality. Overall, I was a little bit thrown off by the slow pace and extensive running time of The Place Beyond the Pines and the fact that the focus of the story kept on shifting between characters without too much consistent focus, particularly on Bradley Cooper's character Avery Cross.

But still, The Place Beyond the Pines was a good crime drama despite its shortcomings. It manages to go into great detail about the notions of its characters and just how complicated their lives are due to the complex nature of them and the depth of them in writing, so The Place Beyond the Pines does go to show the strength of Derek Cianfrance as a writer and director, especially as a writer because he manages to craft some complex characters in The Place Beyond the Pines which gives the actors a lot to work with.

The Place Beyond the Pines captures some nice scenery. With a mere budget of $15 million, The Place Beyond the Pines manages to establish some memorable imagery such as the sights of the forest as Ryan Gosling rides a motorbike through them, as well as the several buildings that the film is shot in. Everything is captured with some really nice cinematography which moves along the scenery very smoothly and successfully captures all the visually aooealiung elements of things. One interesting aspect in The Place Beyond the Pines is that its colour palette has a certain bright whiteness to it at times, while in others things are a slightly darker tone than the natural colour of the scene. It almostfeels as if this reflects the way that the characters in the world of the film The Place Beyond the Pines view things in a very black and white manner, as in the idea that there are good people and bad people but there is no silver lining. So from a visual perspective, The Place Beyond the Pines is a fairly nice experience.

But one of the most key aspects to the success of a film like The Place Beyond the Pines is the cast.

Ryan Gosling makes a dramatically effective lead in The Place Beyond the Pines because while he constantly puts up a facade of fearless confidence with what he's doing, you can always see that there is an underlying tone of fear within him. This presents the character Luke Glanton as a realstic figure because rather than being a criminal who is fearless in what he is doing, you can see that small aspects of him which keep him human. Luke Glanton is a human being, not a mindless criminal. And the approach that the film takes to his character makes it fairly easy to sympathise with him, so Ryan Gosling works well with the writing in The Place Beyond the Pines and delivers his lines with honesty and natural acting strength.

And while Bradley Cooper doesn't get as much screen time as you might hope for a high profile and two-time Academy Award nominated actor with his skill and name, he manages to do an effective job conveying the drama that his character Avery Cross faces as he gets involved with crime and the troubles of fatherhood, so he acts out various kinds of dramatic territory very convincingly within his short span of time on screen. Bradley Cooper is a fine addition to the cast in The Place Beyond the Pines.

Eva Mendes manages to give a really great performance as well. While I tend to consider her a rather generic actor and more of a pretty face than anything, in The Place Beyond the Pines her attractive qualities remain but take a back seat to her acting talent. Proving how skilfully she can work with the serious dramatic material of the script, Eva Mendes makes a hell of an impact with the strength of her performance in The Place Beyond the Pines because she is able to create a dramatically intense chemistry with the surrounding actors, particularly with Ryan Gosling. Eva Mendes delivers one of the strongest performances of her career in The Place Beyond the Pines because she proves what makes her a good actress with her the edgy line delivery and emotional depth she puts into her character in The Place Beyond the Pines. This is the first true display of the endeavour of her acting talents, and it is fairly impressive.

Ben Mendelsohn and Ray Liotta both give effectively dramatic supporting performances as well, as does Dane DeHaan. So the acting succeeds from everybody in The Place Beyond the Pines.

So all in all, The Place Beyond the Pines is ambitious to a fault with its story and tedious structure, but the writing in it is excellent and it shows some of the greatest talents of the actors which makes sure it works as fairly strong entertainment.