HOLLYWOOD churns out heist movies with such regularity you have barely finished sucking on a fantail when out rolls the next one.
And the genre has become so predictable you can almost place them into two neat categories: the taut thriller—boring, predictable cookie-cutter hyperactive hero; and the slapstick comedy, involving some bungling poop heads.
So when Luke Glanton (hey girl! Ryan Gosling) a brooding, carnival motorcycle stunt rider, starts holding up banks to “feed his family”, I started thinking, “I’ve seen this before”.
But Derek Cianfrance’s latest offering The Place Beyond the Pines, is a beautifully bittersweet crime drama, criss-crossing very human stories.
Essentially a karmic morality tale about the sins of the fathers being visited upon the sons, it’s handled with aplomb.
At first we follow Glanton, a tattooed drifter who discovers he has a one-year-old son to waitress Romina (Eva Mendes).
Determined to “do the right thing” by his child, Glanton starts robbing banks after meeting local reprobate Robin (Ben Mendelsohn).
In Pines, the Australian sidekick turns in an incredibly nuanced performance.
Just when you think these bank jobs are all too easy for Glanton, the movie flips on its head when he comes face to face with cop Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper). Like Glanton, Cross also has a young son but the men’s lives couldn’t be more different.
The film’s focus shifts to Cross and his struggles as guilt, honesty and ambition compete, resulting in a collision with fellow cop Deluca (Ray Liotta).
Fast-forward 15 years and Cross is running for New York district attorney, while his now-teenage son is a drug-obsessed high school bully and a good mate to Glanton’s son, Jason (the boys know nothing of their fathers’ histories with each other).
The boys’ relationship is all a bit contrived and more effort should have been put into weaving a plausible tale of how they met and knitted together.
Regardless, with drugs, police and politics involved you can well imagine the troubles in store.
The Place Beyond the Pines is, at times, engrossing but is ultimately too long. The drastic tonal shifts can be hard to follow.
Gosling delivers a moving, unsentimental performance as a not-too-bright character, burdened by guilt and duty.
Sean Bobbitt’s cinema-tography is tender, rich and breathtaking as he draws the audience into “the places beyond the pines”.
And former Faith No More frontman Mike Patton’s musical score is hypnotic.
A heist movie with a difference. You don’t see that everyday. It’s at LunaSX but not for too much longer.
by BRENDAN FOSTER