Thursday, May 18, 2017

The Review: The Place Beyond The Pines


The Place Beyond The Pines 10/10

There will be spoilers for this years old movie. I loved The Place Beyond The Pines. I don't know why I didn't check it out sooner. It stars Ryan Gosling who is bae. Eva Mendes who is co-bae. Seriously. This has just been sitting in my Netflix cue and I have been thinking of deleting it for no reason. Thank god I didn't because all I thought this was about was Gosling riding a motorcycle and doing crime with Mendes as his partner and Bradley Cooper hunting them down like some bootleg Bonnie & Clyde. I was super wrong. Gosling is Luke Glanton. He is a motorcycle stuntman that just breezes through towns. One day he is found by a girl he slept with, Romina Gutierrez played by Mendes. He drops her off at home and that is that. He ends up finding out that she had a baby and he is the father. He is upset that she was going to let him leave town not knowing that he had a son.


Luke ends up quitting his stuntman work and needs to find work. He is offered a job by this guy named Robin played by Ben Mendelsohn. He is a mechanic and tells Luke that he used to rob banks and that he should consider it if he wants to get some money for his kid. They do using his motorcycle to do it and then rolling into the back of a truck. Luke starts buying stuff for the baby and Romina much to her new man's anger. His name is Kofi and he is played by the awesome Mahershala Ali. Luke starts bringing presents, taking pictures with his wife and kid, and shit gets real when he just shows up and starts building a crib. Luke smashes Kofi in the head with a wrench and ends up arrested. Robin doesn't want to help Luke rob anymore banks so he goes it alone and fucks up.


He eventually ends up on the run from the police and runs into a house taking a hostage. He calls Romina and tells her not to tell their son about him and is then shot by Cooper playing officer Avery Cross. Cross is shot in the leg as Luke falls out the window and dies from his wound. Yep! He is gone from the movie. I was shocked. Now shit starts to get dirty in this movie. Cross is hailed as a hero but he feels fucking terrible about what he did being a new cop and finding out that Luke had a son his own kids age. It also doesn't help that every cop he knows is dirty. Like...all of them. Ray Liotta is one of his superiors and takes Cross from dinner to go to Morina's house with no warrant and search it. They take the money Luke left for them and leave ad split it up. Cross tries to give it back but Romina just wants him to stay the fuck away from her.


Cross is still seen as a hero cop but he tries to turn his colleagues in and even his captain is like “I don't wanna hear none of this shit!” Cross ends up getting all of them indicted or put into prison especially after recording one of them telling him the rules and that he has to be dirty. Years end up passing and Cross is now divorced and has custody of his son AJ. AJ is a dick and played by Emory Cohen who I didn't recognize from that movie Brooklyn. He is in a new school and meets this kid named Jason played by Dane DeHaan. Turns out that Jason is Luke's baby son all grown up! Neither of them know the history of their fathers and how their paths crossed.


I'm gonna stop right there because by this point in the film I was wrong so many times. I kept on thinking this was going one way and it went in a far better direction. I loved the look of this movie and really appreciated the dialogue. The people in this talked like real people. It never felt like anybody was acting which is always nice. Makes me forget that I am watching a movie. There were scenes were I was tense and waiting for shoes to start dropping. God! This was good. Don't go in expecting some action packed bank heist film. Its just really damned good.

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