Review: "The Place Beyond the Pines"

Director: Derek Cianfrance
Runtime: 140 minutes

Bold, intimate, and raw. These three adjectives, among many others, were thrown at Derek Cianfrance's Blue Valentine when it opened to rave reviews in 2010. That film was a split look at the rise and fall of a romance and marriage, confined entirely to characters navigating the ups and downs of every day life. As such, when Blue Valentine worked, it delivered tremendously powerful, and often unsettling, moments that burst from the screen. The same three above-mentioned adjectives can also be used to describe Cianfrance's follow-up, The Place Beyond the Pines, with one new addition: ambitious. Unfortunately, it's that new adjective that leaves Pines falling short of its lofty goals. For all of its merits, Pines is ultimately more admirable for its ambition, rather than its execution. 

Split into three stories (each of which could, in a sense, be their own full-fledged films) linked by time, the film ultimately comes down to the relationships between fathers and sons. There's Luke (Ryan Gosling), a heavily tattooed, volatile motorcycle stuntman who learns that a former fling (Eva Mendes), has had his child. Meanwhile, fresh-faced cop Avery (Bradley Cooper) is doing his best to fight against corruption in the local police force, while also dealing with his own newborn son. Detailing how the story threads cross paths, and ultimately play out, would require quite of bit of plot spoiling. Suffice it to say that as time passes, and the film's scope widens, the plot becomes more and more dire for all involved. 

In fact, the evolution between and among stories (one of which involves a 15 year jump forward) is the most compelling aspect of the script, written by Cianfrance, along with Ben Coccio and Darius Marder. The ways in which actions, and the way we see them, echo across stories and time periods is often subtle, but lends the film a nice connective thread. Gosling is first introduced to us in a long tracking shot that follows him with his back turned to the camera. In the third part of the film, one of the first times we meet his high school-aged son Jason (Dane Dehaan), we also follow him as he keeps his back turned to us. It's a simple, but telling, bit of camera work that reinforces the idea that Luke (and therefore, any of his offspring) are outsiders, always moving forward and unable to sit still and settle down. Less clear is the titular place beyond the pines, which seems to be a vague manifestation of the place where bad decisions begin and/or play out. 

Cianfrance's ability to link the stories is critical, as the film runs for nearly two and a half hours. Though the first hour or so is more energetic (Luke gets into the bank-robbing business) than the remaining screen time, the energy never really flags. If anything, Cooper carries more of the film than Gosling does, despite both presences looming over the entire film. His story at first seems more mundane, but it actually has equally (perhaps more?) interesting emotional territory to mine. 

But as the film progresses, Cianfrance lets the widening scope of the material overwhelm him. Despite the nicely handled plot mechanics, Pines never achieves the emotional resonance that it clearly strives for. The most immediate comparison is last year's Cloud Atlas, a film which had to put so much effort into churning out its six stories coherently than it wasn't able to stick the landing on the emotional front. Even though all three sections of Pines are clearly linked on multiple levels, there's still the feeling that certain relationships aren't fully explored. A potentially gripping subplot involving Avery ratting out some dirty cops is glossed over (albeit elegantly) in order to get things moving forward.  

Emotional developments suffer from this approach as well. Part three introduces us to Avery's troubled son AJ (Emory Cohen), yet the film never attempts to even hint at how the son of an upstanding cop became such a boor. Cohen's performance in the role doesn't help matters, and often feels overwrought. He's not merely troubled or volatile. He's a straight-up bully who we have no reason to empathize with. Faring much better is Dehaan, who actually has an interesting emotional conflict (struggling to connect to a very distant father).

Even this arc, however, is undermined by the overblown conclusion that the film leads towards. When the film reaches what should be its emotional high point, it ends with more of a whimper than a bang. The energy of the storytelling can only paper the lack of true character development for so long, and by the time the ending rolls around, the film's facade comes crumbling down. The ingredients, however, are all in place for a unique, mesmerizing character drama. Performances are solid across the board, with Gosling, Cooper, Dehaan, and Mendes all getting at least one brief moment to shine with some excellent silent emoting. And cinematographer Sean Bobbitt lends the film a richly colored, gritty look, while composer Mike Patton's unconventional score creates a unique atmosphere out of ghostly choirs and piano chords. 

But the film has more energy than honest emotion. It's telling that the film's most compelling moment is a chase sequence (brilliantly shot in long takes from within a police car), and not the moments of emotional desperation in the final act. A side character played by Ben Mendelsohn (criminally underused) tells Luke that, "if you keep on riding like lightning, you're going to crash like thunder." Like Luke, The Place Beyond the Pines rides like lightning. When it crashes, however, it often sounds more like a hollow thud. 

Grade: C

Review: "X-Men: First Class"

Forget what they've been telling you. Turns out it's not the third time that's the charm, but the fifth. At least, that appears to be the current trend in past-their-welcome Hollywood franchises. It's already happened once this year with Fast Five (the series' only film to earn mostly positive reviews), and now it's happening again with X-Men: First Class, a prequel/origin-story/reboot of the mutant superhero franchise.

After two generally liked films, the X-Men franchise quickly took a nose dive with X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009). And even though there still appear to be plans for a (hopefully much better) Wolverine sequel, FOX apparently felt that it couldn't hurt to cash in on the prequel/origin trend a little further, taking us all the way back to the 40s and 60s. After an opening eerily reminiscent of 2000's X-Men, involving a young Erik/Magneto (Michael Fassbender) in a German concentration camp, we begin a fairly lengthy bit of globe trotting. In one story thread, we see Magneto become something of a Nazi hunter, while in a second, we see a young Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) recruited by a CIA agent (Rose Byrne) to examine the sinister Hellfire Club. Originally thought to be a Communist infiltration of America, it's actually run by Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), a mutant himself, who is determined to use the Cold War to bring about the annihilation of non-mutants.

And despite a certain lack of surprises (we already know which major characters must live), Matthew Vaughn does manage to inject some style, and in turn new life, into the franchise. The 60s interior designs are richly filled out, in settings ranging from Charles' mansion, to Shaw's nuclear submarine. There's also some surprisingly good cast work. McAvoy and Fassbender are standouts among the ensemble, as two men with gradually differing opinions on what it means to be a mutant living among humans. Fassbender ultimately wins out, if only because the script eventually surrenders McAvoy's role and makes him little more than an emotional support for Fassbender's. Yet the two do have a great chemistry, and it's a shame that the film doesn't give us more of their relationship in its attempt to cover so many characters and set-up points. The way the film deals with Magneto's struggle to harness his powers produces some truly effective moments, but it's hard not to feel that there could have been a much grander, more emotional pay-off if said struggle wasn't stuck on the the end of a training montage.

And it's that montage, which comes right before the film's Cuban-set finale, where we can see some of the film's problems start to surface. First Class has a great initial stretch, up until Magneto and Charles finally meet, and a thrillingly put together final half hour. These bookends to the story effectively jump across locations and characters, establishing conflicts and executing fight scenes with a nice sense of clarity. Everything in-between, however, is not quite so consistent. Despite a golden 5 (10?) second cameo, the round-up and training of the young mutants is where everything gets a bit choppy. Not surprisingly, character struggles aren't exactly the most three dimensional. They exist for a little, and then YAY they're solved. Only those issues connecting Charles, Magneto, and Mystique have any real staying power, and despite some nifty powers among the ensemble, I wish they had taken more time to focus on this trio. For every good character interaction, there's something a little cheesy or clichéd. These usually aren't big issues, but they put some dents in the film's armor.

And as good as some smaller cast members are (Nicolas Hoult as Hank McCoy/Beast), others are, well, not. Case in point: January Jones as Emma Frost. As beautiful as she looks, the actress seems totally out of her league here, once again enforcing the notion that her work as Betty Draper on Mad Men is the only good performance she'll ever give. Less of a distraction, though perhaps a tad puzzling, is Rose Byrne as Moira McTaggart. In Byrne's case, the fault may lie more with the writing. Either way, though, for someone who is supposed to be tough and supportive of the X-Men, she has one too many scenes where her character is simply wide-eyed and astounded. It makes her look weak, and even stupid, despite her status as a CIA Agent. That said, at least she gets some chances to act, whereas many in the ensemble are just there. Azazel (Jason Flemying), a red-skinned mutant with a tail and the ability to teleport is more of a cool effect than a character. He still fares better than another henchman of Shaw's, who can create tornadoes, yet never gets a single line.

For all of its little faults, however, Vaughn and co. do deserve credit for restoring quality to a franchise that had taken a serious tumble. In putting more emphasis on exploring (some of) the characters, he's able to inject some scenes with a sense of purpose. When Magneto lifts a submarine clear out of the water, it's more than just a special effect. It's a moment of triumph for the character, one that is built upon his ability to master the trauma of his past. Scenes like this show First Class at its best, and what the series is capable of when some real effort and talent is behind the material. So while this latest installment may be far from perfect, and certainly not the best super hero film, it's a solid (re) kickstart to the franchise, even if it doesn't quite reach its full potential.

Grade: B-