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| Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes in The Place Beyond the Pines |
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, Ben Mendelsohn, Emory Cohen, Dane DeHaan, Mahershala Ali, Harris Yulin, Rose Byrne, Robert Clohessy, Bruce Greenwood, Ray Liotta. Screenplay: Derek Cianfrance, Ben Coccio, Darius Marder. Cinematography: Sean Bobbitt. Production design: Inbal Weinberg. Film editing: Jim Helton, Ron Patane. Music: Mike Patton.
There's a line in the middle of The Place Beyond the Pines that perhaps echoes more in the year of George Floyd than it did even in the year the film was released. A veteran cop named Deluca (Ray Liotta) is praising the rookie Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper) for taking out robbery suspect Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling), who crashed through a window and died after they exchanged gunfire. Deluca says he's been on the force for years and has only had to draw his gun two or three times, and here Avery is with a righteous kill at the start of his career. "And he was white," Deluca adds, marveling, as if killing any other kind of suspect would be routine. To his credit, Avery is not so happy about the kill, aware that he shot first and that he maybe doesn't really deserve being celebrated as a hero. Before long he will finger Deluca as a key figure in the corruption of the Schenectady, N.Y., police department. Avery has a law degree, but he joined the force -- over the objections of his father, a judge (Harris Yulin) -- because he wanted firsthand experience of law enforcement, so he parlays his exposure of the bad cops into a job as an assistant D.A., and 15 years later is running for state attorney general. But this is, as director Derek Cianfrance has said, a fable about the sins of the fathers. Both Avery and Luke had infant sons at the time of their encounter, and the boys are fated to meet. The movie actually begins with Luke's story: When he learns that he has fathered a child with Romina (Eva Mendes), Luke quits his job as a carnival motorcycle stuntman and tries to settle down and become the boy's father. Romina isn't too happy about this: She has moved on and married Kofi Kancam (Mahershala Ali), who is the only father the boy, named Jacob, will ever really know. Luke's efforts to go straight don't last long: Wanting to earn money to help support his son, he gets involved in a string of bank robberies, which eventually lead to the confrontation with Avery that results in Luke's death. The paths of Jacob (Dane DeHaan) and Avery's son, A.J. (Emory Cohen), finally cross in high school. A.J., who has been sidelined by his father's political ambitions, has turned into a swaggering, partying adolescent, and he gets Jacob into real trouble that eventuates in a confrontation with the man who killed his father. Cianfrance delivers a vivid crime thriller, but the film is a little overwhelmed by its epic ambitions, especially the thundering coincidence of the meeting of Jacob and A.J., which the filmmakers want us to see as a mythic working out of fate, but which really boils down to old-fashioned melodrama. The 140-minute run time also betrays the film's slackness, and the starry casting, especially of Ryan Gosling in a role that ends halfway through the movie, doesn't pay off very well. Fine actors like Ali and Rose Byrne (as Avery's wife) are wasted in tiny parts. In short, ambition is as much Cianfrance's undoing as it is that of his characters.
