Review of The Place Beyond the Pines (2013) by Michael T — 10 Dec 2013

With an extended tracking shot, almost reminiscent of Scorsese's 'Goodfellas' and Welles's 'Touch of Evil', begins a film of breathtaking ambition. This picture, a mix between psychological realism and visual energy, reaches for the sky, and while it does not quite achieve its extraordinary aspirations, it does achieve a sombre and at times purely haunting quality.

This tripartite saga about family, crime and moral ambiguity is not quite the epic tragedy it thinks it is, but there is enough great material holding the entire corpus of the film together, and the climax, while flawed, achieves a deep melancholy.

This is a difficult film to assess on first impression, and it may improve (or deteriorate) on second viewing.