This review was originally published in my weekly column at Towleroad
Handsome Luke at the Fairgrounds
The opening shot from THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES, is a stunner. And not only because it starts with a view of a well-muscled and inked masculine torso. The camera follows the man (we don't see his face) as he paces back and forth, plays with a knife and then walks through a fairground where he turns heads and prompts amateur snapshots. Finally the camera catches his face. It's "Handsome Luke" (Ryan Gosling), a daredevil motorcylist about to defy death and gravity in a round metal cage. As soon as we've seen 'Handsome Gosling,' though, Luke throws a motorcyle helmet on depriving us of his Movie Star mug and enters the cage to perform miraculous stunts. As I recall there aren't any edits in this shot and I have no idea how it was filmed unless Ryan Gosling moonlights as a stuntman in addition to his many many other talents (like naming his body parts, and inspiring hilarious fandom and popular internet memes).
This lengthy continuous shot with its 'now you see him, now you don't' movie-star tease is a pretty apt description of the movie to come which is something of a bait-and-switch with a prominent throughline. [more]
Cooper is a Cop With a ConscienceSee, it's not a Ryan Gosling movie so much as an ambitious triptych which passes the baton fluidly each time it's becoming a new movie.
I'm positive that most reviews will spoil surprises so I'm only offering up a few words on its three parts
Movie #1 Handsome Luke
This excellent crime drama is stylish and engrossing that it didn't even occur to me until after the movie ended that this is the second time in less than three years that Ryan Gosling has played an amoral stuntman / driver / criminal who pursues a woman with a child who is already quite taken. It's a testament to the director Derek Cianfrance (who previously delivered Gosling's best work in Blue Valentine) that this new film feels so different despite sharing a genre and so many similiarities.
Movie #2 Officer Cross
I didn't even recognize Bradley Cooper at first. He enters movie #1 as a cop in a very frenzied chase sequence. Soon Cooper has wrestled the narrative away from Gosling and we're in a quieter less adrenaline-fueled film. Which is not to say that it's lacking in intensity. This one's a character study and crisis-of-conscience drama. Though it's fairly involving, Bradley Cooper just isn't quite the mesmerizing movie star that Ryan Gosling is.
And then...
Movie #3 AJ & Jason
Downgrade! The third movie, several years later, follows the sons of both Cross and Luke as they meet in high school and become friends... of sorts. Their meeting will unearth lots of emotional baggage from Movies #1 & #2 and Movie #3 will attempt (clumsily) to wrap things up. For a film that spends a lot of arguing for moral clarity in Act Two it weirdly though arguably glamourizes its earliest crimes retroactively with its coda.
Emory Cohen (the #2 favorite whipping boy of "Smash" hate-watchers) is shamelessly acting in all caps though one might argue that his smarmy way-too-sure of himself Actorly Bravado is a good match for the character who even has "Arrogance" tattoo'ed on his arm. But neither her nor the ubiquitous rising actor Dane DeHaan as Jason is yet up to Gosling or even Cooper's camera-seizing level... which is a problem for the third act of a long crime epic which aims to pull its thematic threads together through the DNA of its fathers and sons.
Grade(s): Movie #1... B+; Movie #2... B; Movie #3... C
Oscar Chances: No. Although it's the kind of epic crime drama that if the reviews were stellar or Derek Cianfrance were more established as an auteur (he'll need to be a few more films in) might win Screenplay traction.