Some movies are meant to be made. By that director, with those actors, with those stories. "The Place Beyond the Pines" is one of those movies. The ripping and gripping start captivates you, but also worries you, for what is to come. The powerful force of three motorcyclists, racing in a closed circular space, serves almost as a premonition of the intensity, randomness and destiny of events and consequences that will forever bind three generations.
In honor of Roger Ebert, whose last review (or one of the last reviews) was the "Pines", I borrow this powerful description of the ouverture and the finale that keeps bouncing in your mind after the movie closes:
"The man straps on his helmet and climbs on his motorcycle, and he and two other daredevils are soon zipping past and around each other inside that metal cage, racing around and around and upside down, defying gravity and all common sense.
We end the movie with another young man on another motorbike, racing to avoid his fate, blissfully unaware the path he has chosen is most likely to take him to the very place he wants to avoid. It is a final shot of heartbreaking perfection."
