Family Trees

The Place Beyond the Pines

*** out of ****

Directed by: Derek Cianfrance

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, Dane DeHaan and Emory Cohen

Running time: 140 minutes

The Place Beyond the Pines is an enthralling, although sometimes unconvincing family saga about the relationships between sons and their fathers from Blue Valentine director Derek Cianfrance. His latest is just as tense and tender as his earlier film, and also reunites him with Ryan Gosling; however, while that film was notable for its scaled-back intimacy, Pines is ambitious to a fault and nearly implodes in its final act.

The crime drama has a somewhat timeless quality: one can imagine this film opening in the early 1970s from a fresh Scorsese or Bogdanovich, with either Steve McQueen, Ryan O’Neal or even a young Jeff Bridges in the two lead parts. Still, Gosling and co-star Bradley Cooper are electrifying, although they both receive less than half of the film’s screentime.

Gosling, in a near note-for-note repeat of the brooding, enigmatic protagonist he played in Drive, is now Luke, an inked-up carnival performer. He arrives in Schenectady, New York with his traveling circus and meets up with an old flame, Romina (Eva Mendes).

Luke discovers that Romina had a son named Jason a year ago – whom is also his, and so he leaves his circus job to take care of Jason. One of the film’s most iconic scenes comes at Jason’s baptism, as the camera tracks Luke as he walks into the chapel and sits. As Jason is baptized 'in the name of the father,' the camera rests on Luke, granting him the chance for absolution in his son’s eyes.

To support his new family, the crusader with his leather jacket, repair shop job and fast ride – had Gosling not played him, I would call this character a rip-off of The Driver – starts knocking off banks in upstate New York. However, the trend of robberies gets attention from local police and Luke becomes the target of many thrilling pursuits, filmed from an in-cruiser perspective.

One of these cops on the hunt is Avery (Bradley Cooper), who left his calling as a lawyer to serve and protect. The second of the film’s short stories follows Avery, riddled with guilt for his actions that deemed him a local hero but left the victim fatherless.

The last third of the The Place Beyond the Pines moves forward 15 years and examines the friendship between Jason (Luke’s son, now played by Dane DeHaan) and AJ (Avery’s boy, Emory Cohen). It is here where Cianfrance begins pushing the elements beyond their breaking point, trying to wrap up the story strands within a neat package.

Cianfrance and co-writers Ben Coccio and Darius Marder push for clarity and coincidence within the deeds of sons in the names of their fathers. Instead of following their own paths in this chapter, however, the characters' motivations serve the need of the screenplay to wrap up all three stories in a neat package. Pines' last 25 minutes are contrived, betraying the foundations of the characters to close the film in a way that harkens back to the imagery and themes of the first two sections.

Nearly everything before this climax is fairly strong, though. The Place Beyond the Pines gets its name derived from the Mohawk meaning for Schenectady, and Sean Bobbitt’s cinematography is crisp and sparkling, giving the New York wilderness a cool glimmer of its own.

It is also hard to find fault within the terrific ensemble, which includes veteran character actors like Ray Liotta as (what else) a hard-nosed cop, Harris Yulin as Avery’s disapproving daddy and Bruce Greenwood as a begrudging district attorney.

Also of note is DeHaan, who is also starting to resemble Leonardo DiCaprio in more than looks, but for his darkly compelling supporting work that ensures he has a big future as a leading man. He played a perturbed teen dealing with the villainous side of superhuman impulses in 2012’s Chronicle and was the best part of last year’s DOA western-wannabe Lawless. He skillfully holds his own here, especially given the presence of a more uneven storyline.

Cianfrance is a smart director who does not let a kinetic visual style and an ambitious narrative form mire the heart of his latest film, treating characters both noble and resentful with pathos. Nevertheless, when one character tells Luke “If you ride like lightning, you’re gonna crash like thunder,” he could similarly be prophesying Cianfrance’s fate. There is skill behind the camera and stellar performances to spare, but the writer/director’s electrifying drama goes off the skids in the last 25 minutes, nearly crashing and burning his good intentions.