The Place Beyond the Pines in 175 Words or Less

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It's tempting to split a review of The Place Beyond the Pines into thirds since the movie's a triptych of times focusing on different characters - there's the Ryan Gosling part, and the Bradley Cooper part, and then the Dane DeHaan slash Emory Cohen final stretch. But the film never felt that trifurcated to me - I think director Derek Cianfrance blends the pieces of his whole pretty seamlessly. It feels of one place, of one world, with an ongoing tale. But I do think that Cianfrance himself might have worried a bit about that because he gets a little too emphatic in the final stretch about pulling things together with echoes that recall the start - beats in the final third began to feel unnatural to me, not borne out of the characters he'd built up but rather this sense of fate or destiny or at the very least poetic justice that starts to feel real strained as he brings it home.