Saturday 2 November 2013

The Place Beyond the Pines - Phil's Five Words for Films

The Place Beyond the Pines As far as I am concerned, there are two main problems with this story of how events can effect people and even be passed on to future generations. Firstly, there is the linear storyline that is split in to three distinct parts. The first ( and the best by some distance ) follows Luke ( Ryan Gosling ), a motorcycle stunt rider who turns to a life of crime after discovering that he is a father. Just as the story and characters are becoming interesting, the film switches focus and pace, moving on to a police officer ( Bradley Cooper ) who stumbles upon Luke's activities. From here on in, we sit through a standard police corruption scenario before, once again, the film changes tack. The third act follows two ( annoying ) teenage boys caught up in the ongoing chain of events and trying to avoid the consequences. Although there are some great performances, ( Eva Mendes, Ben Mendelson, Gosling and Cooper are
all excellent ), the whole thing feels disjointed and, at well over 2 hours in length it plods through the second half. The intense pace of the opening act quickly runs out of energy and the rest of the journey seems pedestrian. This leads to the second main problem, the pacing is all over the place. Also, with the exception of the relationship between Luke and Romina ( Mendes ), there is little of interest and many of the characters are loathsome. The director, Derek Cianfrance made many friends with his first film 'Blue Valentine' but his follow up doesn't rise above average, despite having all the right ingredients.

6 out of 10.
Cert 15 ( uk )
2013. 165mins

1 comment:

  1. The cast was great, but the script itself did seem to get a little looser as it went on and lose a lot of focus of what it was trying to do, or hell, what it was even trying to say. Good review Phil.

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