The biker, the cop, his kid and the biker's kid too

The title of Derek Cianfrance’s new film is a translation of Schenectady, a Mohawk term, and the name of the city in eastern New York state where this 140-minute tripartite crime drama unfolds. So even in his choice of title, Cianfrance is working to invoke a large historical canvas. The Place Beyond the Pines has a chronology that begins in the 1980s. Its style, atmospheres and themes draw upon certain tendencies in American movies of both the 1940s and the 1970s. Its multiple protagonists span generations, racial backgrounds, and class. Its setting feels indifferent to the 21^st century. The film is ambitious, and its ambitions, along with its largely blue-collar milieu and Cianfrance’s obvious craftsmanship are the elements I admire most. But like Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines overreaches in a way that, perhaps, betrays its author’s naïveté. Emotions burgeon and spill over, and as they spill over they feel less genuine, less invested with real experience.

In the first section, stunt biker “Handsome” Luke (Ryan Gosling, very compelling), a sort of poor man’s Evel Knievel, sloppily dressed, beach-bum-bottle-blonde, and covered in tats, turns up with a traveling carnival in Schenectady, where a year earlier he’d had a fling with Romina, a local waitress (Eva Mendes, mostly stuck playing an exhausted victim). Luke learns that that fling resulted in progeny, and his cool, cool heart begins to ache. He quits the carnival and determines to be a dad to little Jason and a partner to Romina—despite the fact that she’s got a boyfriend, who seems very nice and a good provider. Luke meets Robin, a backwoods mechanic and occasional bank-robber, played by Ben Mendelsohn, a very good actor from Australia, and one to watch out for; he was last seen looking even greasier in Killing Me Softly. Robin is the film’s most interesting character, partly because, unlike most of the other characters, his intentions aren’t overstated. (Robin nevertheless has the film’s most thudding line: “If you ride like lightning, you’re gonna crash like thunder.”) One suspects that lonesome Robin’s in love with Luke. He gives him a bed, a job, and what turns out to be a really bad idea: You need money to win that family of yours, don’t you? Let’s utilize your bike skills and rob a few banks. Complications ensue.

The second section follows Avery (Bradley Cooper), a rookie cop and son to a former state supreme court judge. Avery’s whole life changes in the time it takes to pull a trigger. It changes even more in the time it takes him to not refuse a bribe from a coven of corrupt cops helmed by Ray Liotta, our go-to guy for intimidating slime (see, once again, Killing Me Softly). Like Luke, Avery’s got a little boy, and when The Place Beyond the Pines enters its home stretch Luke and Avery’s boys will emerge to fill the narrative foreground, where they’re visited by the sins of their fathers, et cetera, et cetera. This final section loses much of the character development and attention to place that helped make the preceding 105 minutes awkward but absorbing. Forced plot mechanics take hold. The film meanders toward a resolution that feels flimsier with every climax.

Cianfrance is not lacking for audiovisual fluency. He’s good with portentous dissolves, very good at weaving evocative stray images together under the longer speeches (see the bit with Robin shooing geese for a nice example of this). But, somewhere in the grand scheming, his judgment with regards to emotional verisimilitude and narrative concision seems to falter. He may have it in him to make a truly great movie—there are stunning, even heartbreaking moments in both this and Valentine—but in order to achieve this he may have to stop trying so damned hard to make a Truly Great Movie. 

     

The Town: Can I date a witness?

Based on a novel by Chuck Hogan, Ben Affleck’s sophomore directorial effort falls in that middle-ground between better than his detractors would presume and worse than his defenders would hope. Among the virtues common to most good heist movies is economy, sticking closely to the mechanics of the scheme while characters develop quietly in the margins. The Town is most problematic when it lingers too long in those margins, especially the fairly preposterous love story between Affleck’s career robber and the bank manager, played by Rebecca Hall, who he and his crew just kidnapped. The crew wore masks so Hall doesn’t realize that Affleck was her kidnapper—this could have been a way more interesting movie if she did and dated him anyway—and enters into a romance with him that consists almost entirely of Dunkin Donuts dates or hanging out at her place and exchanging over-rehearsed monologues about their personal baggage. His obviously, are heavily censored.

None of the central characters feel worth investing in even after they’re ostensibly fleshed out. Jeremy Renner plays Affleck’s partner-in-crime, your token loose cannon—he thinks he’s James Cagney in White Heat, where Affleck thinks he’s James Cagney in Angels Have Dirty Faces—always sniffing around for an excuse to snuff somebody, another adrenaline junky on the heels of Renner’s acclaimed performance in The Hurt Locker, and a character blatantly constructed as a plot device. I was very excited to see Mad Men’s Jon Hamm in a meaty big screen role, but his g-man never gets to do much besides reiterate his cold determination to nail the crooks terrorizing Boston.

Which is arguably the fifth central character in The Town, named after the Charlestown district which the opening title card describes as a Petrie dish for bank robbers, working men dutifully following in their father’s footsteps, contributing whatever small innovations are needed to maintain the family trade over changing times. That makes bank robbing sound somewhat similar to genre filmmaking, but The Town only partially feels like a solid genre exercise. Affleck’s pretty good with the action bits and his camera work shows genuine affection and sensitivity to his fellow actors, but there’s a significant miscalculation as to how many narrative clichés any one movie can carry without buckling over, including the absurd recklessness shown from both the cops and the robbers during the final shoot-out. So take this as a conditional recommendation: The Town is disappointing for its flawed and flabby script, but there’s enough energy generated in the hold-ups, stake-outs and chases to keep you from feeling completely robbed.

Worldly goods, worldly bads: Clive Owen follows the money in The International

“I’m from the Bronx, so you gotta make it simple,” says a soon to be disposed of INTERPOL agent. Discreetly poisoned, he collapses only moments after his Berlin rendezvous with a representative of the evil International Bank of Business and Credit. As fellow agent Louis Salinger (Clive Owen) rushes to his rescue—only to himself collapse after being knocked upside the head by a truck’s side mirror—we quickly reckon that the intrigue we’re about to be plunged into will be anything but simple. Yet The International, written by Eric Singer and directed by Tom Twyker, wants to cater to those intellectually self-effacing Bronx-dwellers and other ostensibly dopey audience members, so while the plot becomes more wildly convoluted with each passing scene, the glut of platitudes and expository dialogue will attempt counterbalance.

The IBBC trades in more than cash. They’ve cut deals with just about every multinational, hold ties with multiple government agencies, and are single-handedly backing an armed revolution in Liberia. Apt pupils of the shock doctrine, their goal is to cultivate conflicts and control incurred debt. Along the way they’ll force a few hands, if not cut them off. From a previous post at Scotland Yard to his current gig with the apparently ineffectual INTERPOL—the other International of the title—Salinger’s long been crusading to bring these jackals to justice. With the help of a Manhattan DA lawyer (Naomi Watts), Salinger may finally be closing in, valiantly following a series of brutal incidents that could lead to the top: an IBBC VP dies under questionable circumstances, an Italian arms manufacturer and presidential candidate is assassinated, a tailing operation leads to a major shootout in the Guggenheim.

There are splendid bits of character work, such as Salinger’s tendency to have his ears injured, this man who hears too much. There are riveting set pieces, the one in the Gug being especially bracing. There is a surprisingly sinister resolution implying that vigilantism maybe the only way of dealing with powers higher than governments, and there's something weirdly assuring in how it proves that criminal networks will ultimately take care of their own. There’s also an inspired cell phone gag, though elsewhere Twyker’s attempt to wring tension out of text messaging falls flat. And there’s a lot of dragging scenes out, with padded entrances and exits or yet another show-offy bird’s eye shot, even when the scenes in question aren’t very exciting or essential to the story. When it all comes together it’s a great coulda-beena-Bond part for Owen and a decent stab at exposing the perils of globalization, but the state of the dialogue doesn’t bode well for Singer’s prospects and Twyker has yet to recover from Perfume. He made his mark with Run Lola Run over a decade ago, and some—I for one haven’t kept up—argue he’s been smudging it ever since.