Three Stories Don't Add Up To A Great Film

'The Place Beyond the Pines' A film starring Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper and Eva Mendes.Running time 141 minutes. Directed by Derek Cianfrance.


     'The Place Beyond The Pines' is three heavy male stories that hinge on the man who sets the film in motion. Ryan Gosling, the blonde, blue-eyed, jut jawed hunk from Cornwall, Ontario, dominates the film's first part. He's a motorcycling stunt man, who travels with a carnival and maybe he's scattering his seed among many women.
    Then he meets a special woman named by Romina, played by Eva Mendes who lives in Schenectady New York and bears their son Jason. Soon Luke Glanton, played by Gosling takes up robbing banks and with dire results.
    Enter Avery Cross, played by Bradley Cooper. Cross is an honest cop who ends up working with a bunch of crooked policemen.Targeted for murder by his one-time pals, he survives and then prospers. He and his wife have a young child too, just  like Luke and Romina.
     "I'm a cop," Avery tells his wife after a brutal encounter. "That's what I am, a cop." But flash forward 15 years and Avery is now an aspiring attorney-general running for office in the state of New York. Meanwhile, his son  AJ played by Emory Cohen meets up with Luke's offspring Jason in the cafeteria of a Schenectady high school.Jason is played  by Dane DeHaan.
    Jason never did find out how his father died. Soon he tries to turn up his roots, and this means danger. "You're a liar," a beaten up Jason tells his mother Romina as he lies in a hospital bed after discovering the truth.
     Well what does all this add up to?
      Despite some fine acting , maybe not too much. The heart of the film, directed by Derek Cianfrance, lies in the wonderful, sometimes hair raising rides and chases through forests and tree-lined roads in a very green, nearly always sunny New York state. These scenes seem based on  American critic Leslie Fiedler's idea that most of American literature is based on the theme of escaping from civilization  into the wilderness.
    At movie's end Jason takes off on a motorcycle to head out west on a blue-skied fall day, just like a latter day Fiedler might predict. He flashes past trees tinged with orange and yellow. Like his dad he's on the road roaring away from the troubles of the past, on a motorcycle. It's a lovely peaceful moment in a film racked by violence.
    At this point, most viewers might whisper "Enough" and wish Jason a peaceful future and good luck wherever he ends up. After all Schenectady has been through in this film and  everything Jason has felt, he deserves a rest . Hopefully he'll find what he's looking for out west. 'The Place Beyond The Pines' in the end disappointed me, but cheapskate that I am, I didn't hobble away from the theatre feeling cheated. It only cost me eight or nine dollars. At that price it was a good bargain.