The Place Beyond the Pines is something like
Copland meets
the Godfather meets
Drive. A movie about men, their sons, corruption and the impact of our choices far beyond the here and now.
Starring two of Hollywood’s hot A-listers, Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper, this is a slow burner that may not be everyone’s cup of tea but has to be admired for its ambition. It has the tempo and archetypes of Drive, the notion of family values of the Godfather movies and the ideas of masculinity and corruption found in Sylvester Stallone’s Copland.
The movie tells the story of two men on the opposite ends of the law and how one incident will forever change their lives and the lives of those around them. The movie also touches on ideas of fathers: the impact of fathers on their children especially sons, depending on the presence/abscence and nature of that relationship.
The two leads are both new born fathers, one a cop, the other man with a record and some bad social tendencies. The film explores these two fathers, who in their own way, are trying to be good men.
It's interesting, especially in an SA context with township streets filled with Guluva dads ... at what point are these guys petty criminals or just men trying to provide for the families and be and do better for their kids? But at what cost?
Gosling is quietly making a name for himself as an actor who can pull off the anti-hero over and over again and still make that anti-hero likeable - as he did in Half Nelson and Drive. Like in the movie Drive, he plays another strong silent type with a good heart but with psychopathic impulses. A man who's made a lot of wrong choices and sees fatherhood as a chance to start anew.
Whilst Bradley Cooper shows his not just a pretty face - just like he did in
Limitless and
Silver Lining Playbooks - Cooper brings his A-game to this role. He plays a hero, who looks the part, sounds the part of the hero but is genuinely flawed. It's always great to see Cooper do roles where he is not the comic relief or the pretty face, for the man has range. In this movie he is able to craft a character so that by the end of it, we’ve seen him grow from one extreme to the other - he embodies the character very well.
The two leads are surrounded by an excellent cast including Ray Liotta as the slimey, dirty cop, a very ragged looking Eva Mendes and two brilliant supporting performances from Dane Dehaan (the scary kid from Chronicle) and newcomer Emory Cohen as Cooper’s son. The relationship of the latter gives this film a different feel altogether and sense of foreboding that is never milked.
The two kids also show a dark side to our current society with all these young men who are growing up disconnected to everyone and using drugs and alcohol as an escape. A lot has been said about daddy issues from girls of single parents but this shows the perspective of what an absent father can do to a boy child. Something a lot of South African communities face on a daily basis.
Although at times the films feels a tad bit melodramatic and almost something that would work more as a TV series than a 2-hour movie, the film is brave in showcasing a not-so-clean-cut-version of life and introduces us to characters who stay with us way after the credits have rolled.
An interesting movie on family, masculinity, fatherhood and corruption - if you looking for something less obvious and not so loud, where there are grey areas in morality and complexity, themes that actually speak to our world that we live in, rather than the world of superheroes and demigods, The Place Beyond the Pines is for you.