Week 4 Selection: The Place Beyond the Pines (2012) directed by Derek Cianfrance
Happy Memorial Day, everyone. I hope that you all enjoyed a weekend filled with beers and disgusting amounts of food as I did. Pretty soon, we’ll all be tired and hungover and ready to just sit back and watch a movie. So why not go with the ridiculously underrated The Place Beyond the Pines?
With Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper being the two headlining actors of this movie and Eva Mendes (Sheila Gamble from The Other Guys) being really hot, it’s wild to me that so few people have seen this movie. It’s a bit hard to explain the plot without giving anything away, but I’ll do my best. The movie happens in three different parts:
Part 1: This part is focused on Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling), a motorcycle stuntman. When he finds out that an old girlfriend has had his child, though, he leaves all that behind to be a good father, but the money situation is tight and he has to do some not-so-legal things to make sure that he can take care of the child.
Part 2: This part follows Avery Cross, a cop in the same town that Luke Glanton is living in. After some heroics and discovering some dirty dealings by another detective, played by Ray Liotta (Henry Hill in Goodfellas), he creates some leverage to push himself higher in the local government.
Part 3: This one is all about the sons of Luke and Avery, who come across each other and both have to deal with the consequences of what their dads have done.
I’d say the most accurate genre for this movie would be a drama, but it has all the elements of a crime thriller as well. The acting is terrific throughout the whole movie, and the time jumps that are made make for a really cool development of the story. It’s definitely a must watch.
