The Place Beyond The Pines - film review

Ryan Gosling's daredevil on a bike meets Bradley Cooper's cop on a mission
12 April 2013

A “globe of death” motorcyclist discovers his former lover has secretly borne him a son and starts robbing banks to provide for the family he never knew he had.

The daredevil rider is Ryan Gosling, who became a kind of latterday film noir icon after Drive, and the mother is Eva Mendes. It looks as if director Derek Cianfrance is going to fashion something similar to Nicolas Winding Refn’s film, pointing his camera at myriad close-ups of his star as if he knows exactly what his fans want. Then the law, in the shape of Bradley Cooper’s lone police officer, catches up with the handsome robber and he disappears from the movie. What we are then left with is a long and sometimes tendentious exposition of the hero cop’s political ambitions and the efforts of the robber’s son (Dane DeHaan) to find out about his father.

The two stories mesh uneasily, even though the film-making is smart throughout and the acting often more than that. In Gosling’s case, however, he’s only required to be good on a bike, which is a waste — and two hours and 20 minutes makes it a pretty long journey.

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