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The Place Beyond the Pines
The Place Beyond the Pines
The sins of the fathers visited upon the sons is a fairly common subject in Hollywood, but it is rare that it is done as thoughtfully as The Place Beyond the Pines.
Writer/director Derek Cianfrance’s followup to critic’s fave Blue Valentine tells three complex, interwoven stories in it’s over two hour running time, focusing on two pairs of fathers and sons and how their completely random but devastating meeting affects the lives of their sons sixteen years later.
The movie is beautiful, squalid, tragic, complicated and almost completely without levity.
The first section follows Luke (Ryan Gosling, reuniting with Cianfrance after Blue Valentines), an aimless motorcycle stunt rider for a traveling carnival. While doing a stop in Schenectady, he runs into a gorgeous local waitress named Romina (Eva Mendes) with whom he’d had a fling the year before. When he learns that the affair led to a baby, Luke decides to give up the carny lifestyle and move to Schenectady to care for his son and try to win Romina from her new boyfriend. Unfortunately he has no real skills other than riding and jobs are hard to come by, so he gets involved in a series of bank robberies. Things seem to be going well for him until he gets involved in one heist too many, at which point his trails cross with…
Avery (Bradley Cooper), a green rookie cop who is the first on the scene at the robbery and gets into a high-speed chase tracking down the criminal on a motorcycle. Avery’s connection with the case makes him a local hero, however Avery made one huge mistake and realizes that he is not as heroic as the rest of the world thinks. He also feels guilty when he finds out Luke had a one-year old son, because Avery had a son the same age. Then as he gets more and more accepted into the department, he suddenly realizes that many of his fellow cops are corrupt, leading him to maneuver his way into a political position trying to clean up the local police.
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Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
