The Place Beyond the Pines

Ryan Gosling is undoubtedly one of the most bankable actors in Hollywood at present.

He gained much credibility in the 2011 art-house hit, Drive, playing a taciturn stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway driver on bank heists.

There are close similarities in his most recent film, The Place Beyond the Pines, where he is a drifting and taciturn motorcycle stunt rider in a travelling fair.

When the fair returns to the town of Altamont in New York State a year after its previous visit, Gosling’s character, Luke Glanton, discovers he is now the father of a 3 month old son, the result of a casual affair. He quits his job to stick around and establish a relationship with the boy and his mother, Eva Mendes, who is now in a steady relationship with another man and is more than a little dubious about the benefit of Gosling hanging around.

Glanton picks up some work with a crash repairer, the seedy Ben Mendelson, but his minimum wage is insufficient to provide the support he feels he needs to show to become an integral part of his son’s life. Mendelson suggests they knock off some banks – he has past form – using his knowledge in staging a heist with Glanton’s skill as a rider to make the necessary quick exit. All goes well, for them at least, until the two men have a falling out. Over-confident, Glanton attempts a robbery by himself which quickly goes wrong and fleeing the scene, Glanton finds himself in a desperate cat and mouse chase with the local Police.

At this stage, rookie officer Avery Cross played by Bradley Cooper enters the film. And here there is such a game-changer that it’s really not possible to divulge any further synopsis without giving away major strands of the film.

Suffice to say, the movie takes on a completely unexpected turn of events and heads in a direction which I can imagine very few would see coming.

This is a taut and solid thriller with excellent performances from the whole cast. A special mention to Ray Liotta in a cameo role as a corrupt police officer who exudes menace from every pore – helped by lighting and camerawork designed to highlight his malevolence. You feel uneasy every time he’s on screen.

The film’s ultimate conclusion does rely on a coincidence – a big coincidence. But director Derek Cianfrance gets away with this by letting the audience into the secret from its outset, and doesn’t string it out to try and invoke an unlikely twist. And coincidences happen. If they didn’t, the Archduke Ferdinand would never have been shot and World War One might never have occurred.

More dramas of this calibre please.

**** 

Star Trek Into Darkness

Does this sound at all familiar? Captain Kirk is insubordinate, disobeys orders and is demoted from his command. An emergency then manifests itself; Kirk is reinstated to his former office and sent on a dangerous mission with his loyal crew only too happy to have him back. There are then a series of adventures, setbacks and plot-twists as the film-makers toy with the audience, keeping them in suspense as to who might be the real baddies and who are the good guys.

This is a romping and thoroughly enjoyable action film which is full-on in its run of over 2 hours and never allows any lull in proceedings. This is augmented by terrific CGI special effects, as you would expect. Don’t expect to be bored at any stage of this visually spectacular film.

But it fails to make the transition to ‘classic of its genre’. The film’s main weakness is the casting of Chris Pine as Captain Kirk. That he is easy on the eye is pretty much beyond dispute, but therein lies the problem. He does not convey the inner gravitas for the role he plays here. You can’t understand how he could have risen to command in the first place, let alone been considered worthy of reinstatement following being stripped of that status. It’s not helped either that were he to get in a fisticuffs with Justin Bieber, you’d be hard-pressed to know who you’d put your money on. The producers clearly want him to develop a Butch and Sundance style partnership with offsider Spock – the highly effective Zachary Quinto. But it’s not working. I have no wish to be unnecessarily harsh on him – he has previously acted well, convincing as the feckless son in Bottle Shock. I just feel he needs a few grey hairs and some laughter lines, an indication that he’s lived life and known disappointment.

Benedict Cumberbatch has a clear run as the arch-villian John Harrison/Khan. He is flawless in his portrayal of an evil man seeking to wreck the world and stamp ruthlessly on anyone who prevents him from getting his own way. Still, Benedict went to Harrow School so I imagine that he was given the perfect education for such a role. (Yes I know that’s a little unfair – Churchill went there too). Simon Pegg returns as Scotty and is given a series of one-liners which were a little over-laboured and failed in the cinema I attended to raise much of a laugh. Zoe Saldana also returns as the headstrong Lieutenant Uhura and interacts well with Spock with whom she is romantically involved.

Take a couple of glasses of wine into the cinema when you go and see this film and you should enjoy it greatly.

****

Drift

Expectations for the lowish-budget Aussie surfing film Drift were not pitched overly high.  My local cinema’s synopsis of the story about two brothers who ‘spend their youth searching for the perfect wave…(dreaming) of a world where they can surf to live and live to surf’ I pretty much felt sure what I was letting myself in for.

But the film delivered more than was promised.

The film has a lively start, with the brothers as young children arriving fortuitously at the Western Australian surf town which would become their home after the cross-continent drive from Sydney where their mother had executed a tense midnight flit for the three of them to escape their drunken brute of a father.

The action quickly fast forwards to their young adulthood as they lead a laid back if dead-end lifestyle before realising they can make surfboards better than those commercially available, moulding them in the garage at their home as their seamstress mother starts fashioning custom-made wetsuits. Their ambitions to expand are constantly thwarted by a lack of funds, the myopic tendencies of the town’s old world conservative bank manager and the unwanted attentions of the local constabulary suspicious of their motives and lifestyle. Matters are complicated by a feud with the local bikie-gang – also the town’s drug suppliers.

A talented, itinerant and very hirsute surf filmmaker, a slightly unconvincing Sam Worthington, arrives on the scene in his bus-come-home with an attractive Hawaiian companion befriending the brothers and giving them much needed support in their constant battles with the bikies and encouragement in their enterprises.

The main characterisations within the film were well drawn. Myles Pollard gave a stand-out performance as the elder brother, Andy, whose drive and business acumen didn’t impinge upon his enjoyment of the more flippant things in life. The younger, rather wayward and unreliable brother Jimmy was nicely played by Xavier Samuel with roguish charm. Their mutual attraction and rivalry for the Hawaiian girl was subtly underplayed.

The story swept along at a good pace and remained surprisingly fresh and original until the film’s showdown. In debt to the bikies after becoming unwittingly involved in a drug deal by an accomplice, the boys desperately need cash they don’t have. But as luck would have it, there is an upcoming major surf competition on the horizon. If only this could be won and the cash prize used to get them out of trouble…

Jimmy, the more talented surfer, has gone walkabout so it falls to Andy to register as a wildcard entrant and save both their dreams and business – as well as his unbroken legs. From that point onwards, we were in rather familiar territory.

This is a small scale film, well aware of its limitations which on the whole punched nicely above its weight. It portrayed a dark side to the sleepy coastal town to a degree I had not expected. Cinematography from Geoffrey Hall was first rate capturing the beauty and awesome power of the surf. There is enough good surfing action to please the aficionados but not at the expense of developing story and characters. A sporadic glam-rock soundtrack was insufficient, possibly the result of budget restraints.

A slightly generous: 3.5 stars