The Place Beyond the Pines (2012)

***Major Spoilers Bellow***

The most distinctive and memorable quality of The Place Beyond the Pines is its novelistic structure, despite not being based on any pre-existing text its quite literary. The movie is broken into three acts, the first act concerns Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling) "a locally well-known motorcycle stuntman working in a traveling act for state fairs", who unknowingly impregnates Eva Mendes, leaves for a year, comes back to discover he has a son, and then tries to win back Eva (who has moved on to a new, more stable boyfriend) by showering her with money and gifts, which he finances through robbing banks. The second act concerns Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper) an ambitious young cop with a law degree (he is the son of a local judge) who kills Glanton after he flees a robbery, is briefly brought in by a group of dirty cops, and then turns on those cops as a way of redirecting his career into the district attorneys office. The third and final act concerns the sons of both Glanton and Cross (played respectively by Dane DeHaan and Emory Cohen) who meet up and befriend one another 15 years later not knowing the history there fathers had with each other (so the movie spans roughly 1995-2012).

This is a solid mood piece of a movie, well acted, directed, and written. As I said before the scope and feel of the film is literary, the story reminds me of one of those really solid mini-series they used to make for American television back in the 70's and 80's. For those who might be wondering, and something which I myself just found out, the title refers to the stories primary setting of Schenectady, (New York) which loosely translates from the Mohawk language as "place beyond the pine plains". I highly recommend this movie, its very intriguing and holds your attention throughout, my sister and I hardly spoke a word to each other when we watched this together, which is rare. ***1/2