Director: Derek Cianfrance
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, and Dane DeHaan.
Plot: The fateful encounter between a motorcycle stuntman turned bank robber and an ambitious cop avoiding police corruption leads to dire consequences.
Review:
By now, you have probably read about this movie whether it be movie reviews or something else. Every review I have read so far is front-loaded with Ryan Gosling as the bank robber. Makes sense because the movie is the same way, front-loaded with a hell of a lot of Ryan Gosling. And then the review starts tapering off saying how it doesn’t want to spoil the movie for you. I am also going to do the same thing because the trailers have done such a great job hiding the true nature of the movie. Trust me when I say you don’t know what you are in for (unless you read actual spoilers).
It is a 3 act structure, but not in the way Hollywood usually structures there 3 acts. It is more like 3 chapters each has massive consequences for the next. Each has some really talented actors playing some very interesting characters. Gosling is playing a new version of Driver from Drive except more advanced emotionally. Where the driver seemed incapable of feeling strong emotions, Gosling’s Luke is just cut off from the major ones due to his nomad lifestyle. When he finally finds roots they overwhelm him and push in a very desperate direction. Bradley Cooper is great as well as an honest cop trying to juggle interpersonal politics (ie no snitching allowed) and his high and mighty moral code. It is a restrained performance of a man pushed to a similar desperate path, except the law is on his side, unlike Gosling, so the direct consequences seem much less severe than Cooper realizes. Dane DeHaan plays the main character of the third chapter. DeHaan is quite the up and coming talent, and I truly think that he is the best performance of the bunch. I only wish I could tell you more about him but that would ruin what I already said I wouldn’t.
Each individual effort is amazing and compelling. The movie is jam packed with the themes and style of writer/director Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine. He is about peeling back the superficial person and showing the uglier, more raw emotions of the human condition, especially how they only seem to complicate things. And man do they complicate things here. Problems compound and become unstoppable, but they move so low it becomes tedious and torturous. The problems essentially tease you with how easy they seem to be stopped but won’t. Maybe that is part of the experience, but that part wasn’t working for me personally. The 3 segments don’t coalesce the way they should, or at least the way I’d like them too. The performances speak for themselves though, and for that alone it’s worth a look.
Rating: 7/10
What to Watch: Trucker starring Michelle Monaghan and Nathan Fillion.
