Following side-show stunt biker Luke
(Ryan Gosling) after he quits his job to try and make amends to the
mother of his son he never knew about, he provides for them by
turning to bank robbery. This callous turn in character dooms him,
his family and others who become involved and long into the lives of
their children.
I knew very little about the film,
asides from it being another vehicle for Gosling. But truth be told,
the performance of note here is Bradley Cooper. Gosling does a great
job, but if you have seen Drive (in my honest opinion, my preferred
film of the two) you have seen his performance before. Cooper comes
out of nowhere and steals the show, literally.
It is a very slow and quiet film
(again, like Drive) with the characters pulling a lot of weight
around with them in the first act, all bottled up and angst-ridden.
It only gets more convoluted when more characters are introduced in
the second act (this film has very much the three act structure) and
it may lose some audience members with its apparent lack of
commitment to its established characters.
But then the third act comes along...
and I am doing my best to not spoil this entire story (which is very
easy to do, by the way, kudos to me)... and everything, and I mean
everything we have seen so far, comes together and it feels
like you've embraced an entire trilogy of films in the space of 140
minutes.
As a result, it a film that is very
slow at first, and a little alienating, but if you stick with it you
will see it escalate and the characters (even those you thought
abandoned) become richer as time literally moves on around them.
You need patience, time and no
distractions to watch the film and appreciate it. I thought I had all
of them, yet I was starting to struggle a little. It is an excellent
film, and it may require another viewing, but it isn't something I
would go out and buy.
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