The Place Beyond the Pines

Director Derek Cianfrance, working from a script co-written with Ben Coccio and Darius Marder, recasts his Blue Valentine star Ryan Gosling (still waiting for one great part) in a daddy-issues version of Crash. The torsion here involves the fated working class, the morally compromised privileged, various legacies of failure and violence … and some exceptionally odd voice coaching. Cianfrance again has auteurism to burn (his name alone is like something from a Cahiers du Cinéma word jumble), and so burn it he does — on ooh-ahh tracking shots, on conspicuous improvisation, on portent. But not on narrative that escapes thematic boilerplate. Oh, the humanity. Oh, the ungodly coincidence. Oh, the Bradley Cooper.