The Place Beyond The Pines

           

               In a trailer that blurs the line between a touching, nuanced father and son drama and a high-paced, action-packed thriller, The Place Beyond The Pines engaged nearly every synapse in my brain as I developed a fascination with the tattooed, bleached-haired antihero portrayed by Ryan Gosling.  The movie trailer captured my interest with a star-studded cast headlined by Gosling and Bradley Cooper -- not to mention other names such as Ray Liotta, Eva Mendes, and Rose Byrne. At the helm, director Derek Cianfrance willingly creates a certain amount of "trust," a word that Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz say is vital to ethos (Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz 45). We trust that this film will live up to the expectations set by the cast and himself because of their prior work. Logistically speaking, the growing popularity of Gosling and Cooper should also put butts in seats. This is due not only to their incredible ability to act on the screen, but also the "sex appeal," as Gianetti calls it, that the two men concoct (Gianetti 251). Who hasn't heard their girlfriend or mother freak out about how attractive the two are? While these actors appearances generate a certain "emotional" and logical response, the themes exposed in the trailer took my interest to another level. After all, you're not going to get me to see the movie based on how many times Ryan Gosling takes his shirt off. For me, the mere idea of a man choosing to commit a crime in the eyes of the public to provide for his son and ex-lover sets the stage for a truly tragic or hopeful outcome. This is certainly not a role that Ryan Gosling is unaccustomed to after films such as Blue Valentine and Half Nelson. Provided that he follows the same formula of "method-acting" preparation for The Place Beyond The Pines as the films mentioned previously, Gosling should have no trouble reducing his audience to tears while he crafts a realistic and true performance that makes us question our social mores and destroys the barriers between what is right and wrong (Gianetti 272).

            The only instance that the trailer falls short is that the number of demographics that it intrigues is not fully tapping the available market. Sure, women from the teens to the forty and fifty-somethings are excited to see Gosling and Cooper prance around without their shirts on, but the trailer seems to show a movie that speaks universally about what it is to be a man and how preposterously difficult it is to make the toughest decisions in life. This is what I ultimately believe will help the movie reach the male audience as well. However, the trailer for The Place Beyond The Pines does in no way seem to target people below the age of sixteen -- generally speaking, of course.  The movie is rated R, which nullifies the notion of anyone under eighteen getting in without a parent, and at a whopping two and a half hours long the film would be troublesome on a child's attention span -- not to mention someone's backside in one of those uncomfortable movie theatre seats.

            In summation, The Place Beyond The Pines definitely jogged my interest. This is probably because I think that I am one of the demographics that the producers and director were trying to reach. The film features an all-star cast, a gripping premise, and all the action you could want in a sensitive, down-to-earth indie film. However, the trailer fails or perhaps does not want to tap into the "people under sixteen" market. In spite of this, I am giving The Place Beyond The Pines' trailer two Ryan Goslings... Erm... two movie tickets out of three.