The weight of expectation lies heavily on The Place Beyond the Pines. Not only is it co-writer and director Derek Cianfrance’s follow up to 2010’s lauded anti-love story Blue Valentine, it also marks his reteaming with that film’s breakout star, Ryan Gosling.
It transcends easy genre classification as it surges from frenetic crime thriller, to the bridled passions of a savage love story, to family drama about paternal expectation and the sins of the father.
It marks Cianfrance out as a major new force in American cinema and proves the masterful handling of the potentially depressing plot of his last film was not a fluke. He is just as adept handling even broader, less intimate themes here but manages to ground them in a film that, for the most part, doesn’t feel overblown. The energy and rawness in the action scenes is matched in every respect by the way he handles smaller emotional scenes.
The full review is continued over at STV's website.
★★★★★
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