The Place Beyond the Pines

The Place Beyond the Pines - Dir. Derek Cianfrance (2013)

"If you ride like lightning, you're gonna crash like thunder."

Derek Cianfrance debuted as a filmmaker with 1998's Brother Tied, but didn't gain widespread notice until his second feature, "Blue Valentine," an intimate and heartbreaking story of a dissolving marriage. Cianfrance's latest movie, The Place Beyond the Pines, is a much more ambitious effort that re-teams the writer/director with Blue Valentine star Ryan Gosling.

Place Beyond the Pines is a generational drama told in three parts about the sins of the father passing on to their sons. The tale begins with an uninterrupted tracking shot of Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling), the main attraction at a traveling carnival. Luke and his partners, the Heartthrobs, ride their motorcycles around and around within the confines of a caged sphere, an apt allusion for Luke's vagabond life. That is, until he runs into old flame, Romina (Eva Mendes), and discovers they had a son together. Luke decides to stick around. In his own words, "I wasn't around my dad...look at the way I turned out." However, his job prospects are slim and the only work he can get is fixing cars at a low-rent body shop run by Robin (Ben Mendelsohn, once again cast as a sweaty lowlife). Looking to score some fast cash, Luke and Robin cobble a plan to rob banks with the former hitting hard and fast before escaping on his bike. There, Robin will be waiting with a box truck to scoop up Luke and make their escape.

The second act changes gears as we follow Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper), a squeaky clean beat cop who crosses paths with Luke, now dubbed the 'Moto-Bandit.' Avery's newfound notoriety catches the eye of veteran detective Peter Deluca (Ray Liotta). Soon, Avery finds himself in a dirty world where he's forced to take payoffs and steal evidence from police lockup. The story leaps forward fifteen years in the third act to focus on Jason (Dane DeHaan) and AJ (Emory Cohen), the respective sons of Luke and Avery. Jason has a lot of questions about the father he never knew while AJ feels ignored by his dad, who is in the running for New York's Attorney General. The two become friends not knowing the improbable connection they share.

Cianfrance announces his bold vision for Place Beyond the Pines right from the beginning with that memorable tracking shot courtesy of DP Sean Bobbitt, who also shot similar sequences for Steve McQueen on Hunger and Shame. Gosling commands attention with every scene he's in, despite the fact that he plays a slight variation of the taciturn loner seen in Drive. Gosling's smoldering charisma is so undeniable that the film suffers when he disappears. This is no slight on Bradley Cooper, but his character isn't nearly as interesting and his travails are fairly formulaic. The movie does improve in the third act with the arrival of Dane DeHaan, who bares more than a resemblance to a young Leonardo DiCaprio. DeHaan has quickly established himself as one of Hollywood's top newcomers due to his work on Lawless and Chronicle. His performance here is strong and carries the final section of Pines while Cohen overplays his hand with a thick Long Island accent. Eva Mendes is also terrific as the glammed down Romina. Well, at least as glammed down as Eva Mendes can get.

The Place Beyond the Pines is an uneven effort by Derek Cianfrance, but the writer/director has nothing to be ashamed about. There's a melancholy lyricism to the movie, which is handsomely shot and littered with emotional performances and naturalistic dialogue.

Rating: ** ½ (*****)

Kick-Ass 2

Kick-Ass 2 - Dir. Jeff Wadlow (2013)

Scotsman Mark Millar is one of the top writers currently in the comic book industry. He's able to find a unique slant to traditional superhero tropes. Millar's magnum opus, Superman: Red Son, is a brilliant look at what would have happened if baby Kal-El had landed in Stalin Russian instead of Smallville, Kansas. Millar's talent as an author is frequently lost by his proclivities for being a provocateur. His works, such as Wanted and Nemesis, are known to frequently use profanity and violence for shock value. Millar has also come under fire for his cavalier attitude towards the depiction of rape. This leads us to Kick-Ass, which initially debuted as an 8-issue mini-series in 2008 and gained notice for Hit-Girl, a 10-year old vigilante described as a cross between Rambo and Polly Pocket. Hit-Girl casually cursed like a sailor and eviscerated bad guys with a variety of deadly weapons. When it came time to turn the comic into a live-action movie, director Matthew Vaughn raised the $30 million budget himself when studios balked at the violence and the young age of the character that caused most of it. The first Kick-Ass film didn't do blockbuster numbers, but it did enough off a modest budget to warrant sequels.

Kick-Ass 2 is based on the second mini-series and the Hit-Girl spin-off that bridges the gap between the two stories. Some time has passed since the events of the previous picture in which geeky Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) donned a green wetsuit to moonlight as the superhero Kick-Ass. He mostly got the crap beaten out of him while pint-size dynamo, Mindy Macready aka Hit-Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz), did all the real damage. Dave has hung up the tights, but dons them once more to escape his dreary existence as a high school senior. His past exploits as Kick-Ass have inspired dozens of other New Yorkers to put on their costumes, including Dave's best friend Marty (Clark Duke), now known as Battle Guy. Together, they join Justice Forever, a superhero team founded by Col. Stars & Stripes (Jim Carrey), a grizzled ex-mob enforcer who went legit after finding Jesus.

Now that he's playing in the big leagues, Dave receives further training from Mindy, but the sparring sessions end when her guardian and late-father's former partner, Marcus (Morris Chestnut), catches her in costume during a Ferris Bueller race to the house. Forbidden from being Hit-Girl, Mindy must acclimate to civilian life and dealing with one of her most fearsome foes ever, mean high school girls. Meanwhile, Dave's archenemy, Chris D'Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), vows revenge and transforms himself into the Motherfucker, the world's first supervillain. He gathers his own team of thugs and killers led by a buff KGB assassin dubbed Mother Russia (Olga Kurkulina).

There were mixed message with Kick-Ass. It wanted to deconstruct the superhero genre and show real world consequences to costumed crime fighting. Then, it ended with the title character flying around on a jetpack and blowing a man up with a bazooka. Still, it was a fun action movie that hung on a bravura performance from young Chloe Moretz. Kick-Ass 2 is just a mess.

Matthew Vaughn had a flair for action, but he only serves as producer for the sequel. The reins are handed over to writer/director Jeff Wadlow, whose uninspiring resume includes Cry_Wolf and Never Back Down. Somehow, he's also managed to land X-Force as his next picture. Wadlow has no knack for action, employing the same choppy approach that too many American filmmakers adopt. A sequence where Mindy clings to a van full of mobsters is the movie's most poorly constructed set piece. Close-ups of Moretz in front of a green screen are embarrassingly obvious.

Kick-Ass himself has regressed as a character. He's less competent and less interesting in Kick-Ass 2 with his primary motivation being boredom. No, the true star of the sequel is Hit-Girl. Moretz manages to convey all the heartbreak that comes with bullying and adolescent awkwardness. However, Wadlow has embraced Millar's preoccupation with juvenile humor. Any emotional payoff from that storyline is tossed out in favor of a sight gag involving projectile vomiting and diarrhea. In fact, any time Kick-Ass 2 tries to inject some semblance of gravitas; it's undercut by jokes done in poor taste. Two deaths are expected to be taken seriously, yet the movie has such a casual attitude toward death that we feel nothing, except maybe nausea. Mother Russia brutally kills several police officers to a rock version of the Tetris theme and an attempted rape scene is played for laughs. This is tame stuff compared to the source material, which featured a gang rape, children being gunned down, and a decapitated dog.

It's also a shame that Kick-Ass 2 doesn't fully utilize its fantastic supporting cast. An unrecognizable Jim Carrey gives his liveliest performance in years in the small role of the Colonel. Carrey really disappears into the part thanks to some prosthetics and thick New York accent. Taking on these character roles can really revitalize his career. Too bad they aren't in better movies. John Leguizamo and an exuberant Donald Faison are wasted along with Iain Glen from Game of Thrones in a throwaway cameo.

Kick-Ass 2 is an out and out disappointment rife with abrupt tonal shifts and sloppy storytelling.

Rating: * ½ (*****)