Movie Review: Crossing Over (2009)

Genre: Mosaic Drama  

Director: Wayne Kramer  

Starring: Harrison Ford, Ashley Judd, Ray Liotta, Jim Sturgess, Alice Eve, Mahershala Ali  

Running Time: 113 minutes  

Synopsis: In Los Angeles, illegal immigrants either evade the law or do what they can to obtain legal status: 

• Veteran Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Max Brogan (Harrison Ford) reluctantly arrests Mexican factory worker Mireya (Alice Braga), who gets lost in the system while he has to care for her young son.

• Brogan's partner Hamid has a sister Zahra, whose behaviour clashes with her immigrant family's traditional values.

• Australian wannabe actress Claire (Alice Eve) falls into the clutches of corrupt immigration officer Cole (Ray Liotta), whose wife Denise (Ashley Judd) is a well-meaning lawyer trying to find a home for a Nigerian girl held in a detention centre. 

• Claire's notionally Jewish musician friend Gavin (Jim Sturgess) tries to exploit his religion to secure a visa. 

• 15-year-old Taslima is from a Bangladeshi family, and causes a stir at school for an essay about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. FBI agents descend on her home and identify Taslima's parents as illegal aliens.

• South Korean teenager Yong Kim comes from an immigrant family, but falls in with gang members and jeopardizes his future.

What Works Well: This brisk and engaging multi-story drama tackles the desperate plight of illegal immigrants from various corners of the globe, living at society's margins and unified by the desire to make the United States their new home. Without sacrificing emotional depth, writer and director Wayne Kramer's excels in keeping the wide-ranging and cross-cutting plot lines coherent. Families at risk of being torn apart and individuals willing to sell their soul all interact (reluctantly) with an imperfect, strained, and at times exploitative system, as the mini-stories work their way to a satisfying range of resolutions.

What Does Not Work As Well: With six worthwhile stories unfolding simultaneously and within a relatively short running time, it is understandable that most of the characters are drawn quickly and remain confined to limited arcs. 

Key Quote:

Claire (to Gavin): We can't make a go of it without status. I've got to get legal and so do you.

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Movie Review: Something Wild (1986)

Genre: Romantic Comedy Adventure  

Director: Jonathan Demme  

Starring: Melanie Griffith, Jeff Daniels, Ray Liotta  

Running Time: 113 minutes  

Synopsis: In New York City, Charlie (Jeff Daniels) is a recently promoted corporate VP. On a whim, he jumps into the car of the free-spirited Lulu (Melanie Griffith). After she robs a New Jersey liquor store, they have sex at a cheap motel. In Pennsylvania, Lulu reveals her real name is Audrey and introduces Charlie as her husband to her mother Peaches. But the wild adventure takes a dark turn when Audrey's ex-husband Ray (Ray Liotta), a career criminal recently released from prison, shows up at her high school reunion party.

What Works Well: A companion piece to other mid-eighties men-out-of-their-element adventures like After Hours and Into The Night, Something Wild joins a suit-and-tie corporate type as he jettisons caution and surrenders to the erratic desires of a compelling stranger. Melanie Griffith brings a buzz of energy to Lulu/Audrey, and hints at a complex backstory that deserved more attention. Ray Liotta immediately introduces menace and tension, although he enters the story late.

What Does Not Work As Well: None of the behaviour on display carries any whiff of realism, degrading events into episodes of irresponsible silliness. Given his lack of judgment it's difficult to imagine in what context Charlie becomes a Vice President of anything, and any deep-seated motivations or explanations driving his acquiescence and Lulu's impulsiveness are studiously ignored. The final act veers towards crime and violence inconsistent with the preceding vibe.

Key Quote:

Charlie: Look, if you don't turn around and take me back, you're gonna make me do something that I don't wanna do.

Lulu: I can hardly wait, Charlie.

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Movie Review: Identity (2003)

Genre: Psychological Suspense Mystery Horror  

Director: James Mangold  

Starring: John Cusack, Ray Liotta, Amanda Peet, Alfred Molina, Rebecca De Mornay, John Hawkes, John C. McGinley, Jake Busey  

Running Time: 90 minutes  

Synopsis: Psychologist Dr. Malik (Alfred Molina) is attempting to secure a stay of execution for a mass murderer suffering from split personality disorder. Separately, a group of people gather at a secluded Nevada motel during a torrential storm. They include limousine driver Ed (John Cusack) and his actress passenger (Rebecca DeMornay), sex worker Paris (Amanda Peet), correctional officer Samuel (Ray Liotta) transporting a dangerous criminal (Jake Busey), a newly married couple, and a family on a road trip with their young son. The motel manager Larry (John Hawkes) accommodates them all, but soon the guests start to die under mysterious circumstances.

What Works Well: This genre-melding mystery combines elements from Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None all the way to slasher horror, and throws in a couple of delicious twists. Thanks to a taut Michael Cooney script, the large group of soggy characters gathered at the motel are introduced with remarkable efficiency, and the parallel timeframe featuring Dr. Malik attempting to convince a judge to spare a killer's life adds the necessary context. Devious plot decoys strengthen the narrative complexity, and the unending nighttime rain storm emphasizes entrenched psychological turmoil. The cast members add quality to memorable characters hiding secrets and guarding against each other as the body count mounts.

What Does Not Work As Well: This is a rare example of a movie that could have been marginally longer to better round-out a few of the key characters.

Key Quote:

Samuel: All right. You want a plan? Everybody want a plan? Here's the plan, okay? No one's gonna move. We're gonna stay here, like this, in this room until dawn. No one leaves, no one moves.

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Movie Review: Even Money (2006)

Genre: Gambling Drama  

Director: Mark Rydell  

Starring: Kim Basinger, Danny DeVito, Kelsey Grammer, Tim Roth, Forest Whitaker, Ray Liotta, Carla Gugino  

Running Time: 113 minutes  

Synopsis: Aspiring author Carolyn (Kim Basinger) is addicted to slot machines, but keeps her problem a secret from husband Tom (Ray Liotta). At the casino she meets and forms an empathy bond with has-been magician Walter (Danny DeVito). Clyde (Forest Whitaker) is deep in gambling debts owed to bookie Augie (Jay Mohr), and pressures his brother Godfrey (Nick Cannon), a star college basketball athlete, into shaving points. Both Augie and Walter have reasons to connect with ruthless criminal Victor (Tim Roth), who controls the biggest illegal gambling network on behalf of the reclusive Ivan. Meanwhile, police detective Brunner (Kelsey Grammer) tries to keep a lid on escalating violence in the gambling world.

What Works Well: This anthology benefits from the pervasive down-but-keep-digging psychology of gambling, with key characters deep into the addiction morass and far from seeking help. Kim Basinger and Forest Whitaker add star power to the doldrums, and allow the separate stories of Carolyn and Clyde to quickly develop within the efficient running time. Tim Roth contributes venom to Victor's heartless dean of crime, while Kelsey Grammer fits perfectly into a frumpled detective's overcoat, his defeated attitude saluting the human propensity for self-destruction.

What Does Not Work As Well: A sub-plot featuring Augie's partner in the bookie business Murph and his girlfriend (Carla Gugino) just gets in the way. Overall, emotions are confined to plastic predictability, and the resolutions default to tidyness carrying bags of faux poignancy.

Key Quote:

Detective Brunner (narrating): The question is...what are you willing to lay on the line?

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Movie Review: Cocaine Bear (2023)

Genre: Monster Horror Comedy

Director: Elizabeth Banks

Starring: Keri Russell, Alden Ehrenreich, Ray Liotta, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Margo Martindale

Running Time: 95 minutes

Synopsis: In 1985, a drug runner working for gangster Syd (Ray Liotta) drops cocaine-filled bags from a small plane over Georgia's Chattahoochee National Forest. A bear consumes the cocaine and becomes crazed, attacking two hikers. Syd sends his son Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich) and fixer Daveed (O'Shea Jackson Jr.) to retrieve the drugs, and they are pursued by detective Bob (Isiah Whitlock Jr.). Also in the park are kids Dee Dee and Henry, while Dee Dee's worried mom Sari (Keri Russell) searches for them. Park ranger Liz (Margo Martindale), an environmental officer, and a bunch of thugs are the bear's other potential victims.

What Works Well: Based on an actual incident in which a bear died after consuming cocaine dumped from a smuggler's plane, this is a silly, fun, gory, and often hilarious comedy. Highlights include a wild ambulance ride, the bear passing out in a most inconsiderate position, and wayward pistol shooting by the hapless park ranger. The special effects are generally passable, and the music score adds peppy energy with several mid-80's era songs.

What Does Not Work As Well: The cast is cluttered with a few too many bad guys, worse guys, and idiots, and although the insistence on using backstories to round most of the characters is appreciated, the intervals between bear attacks drift sideways into the forest of indifference. The combination of big gore and big laughs is sometimes jarring.

Conclusion: Unsurprisingly, "Don't Do Drugs" also applies to bears.

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Movie Review: No Sudden Move (2021)

A slow-burning crime thriller packed with characters, No Sudden Move delivers a stellar neo-noir mood despite a surplus of plot.

Detroit, 1954. Small-time gangster Curt Goynes (Don Cheadle) has managed to antagonize rival gang leaders Frank Capelli (Ray Liotta) and Aldrick Watkins (Bill Duke). Eager for cash, he accepts an assignment from go-between Doug Jones (Brendan Fraser) for a seemingly simple job. Curt along with enforcers Ron Russo (Benicio del Toro) and Charley (Kieran Culkin) are to hold hostage the family of General Motors accountant Matt Wertz (David Harbour) to force him into stealing a file from the safe of his boss Forbert.

No one is supposed to get hurt, but the plan goes awry. Curt and Ron team-up, determined to find out who intended to double-cross them and why the contents of the safe were so important. Detective Joe Finney (Jon Hamm) gets involved, while Curt and Ron stumble upon high-level corporate secrets and plenty of opportunities to make money, but only if they can survive each other and the many gangsters now in pursuit.

Written by Ed Solomon and directed by Steven Soderbergh with beautiful period details but unnecessary fish-eye lens stunt cinematography, No Sudden Move is a cerebral incursion into multi-layered heist criminality. The film demands and rewards attention and curiosity as competing agendas weave multiple underworld types into a tangle. The abundance of people and incidents deserves a longer running time than the available 115 minutes, and while Soderbergh just about manages to keep the material under control, the final act threatens to over-reach and sacrifices contentment for hurried scampering to the next twist.

In classic noir style, every character has an angle aiming at self-benefit, either obvious or covert, and trust is a rare commodity. Fidelity is in particularly short supply, initial target Matt Wertz acting out a marriage to Mary (Amy Seimetz) while deep into an affair with his boss Forbert's secretary (Frankie Shaw). More marital disharmony is eroding the household of gang boss Frank and his wife Vanessa (Julia Fox), and all the cheating serves as potent fuel for several memorable sharp curves.

Not satisfied with already dense convolutions, Soderbergh injects racial tension between Curt and Ron, and more tangential references to the destructive impacts of the automotive age on Black neighbourhoods. The latter undercurrent deserves more thorough exposition, but here is rolled into the industry's well-worn tendencies to pick the bottom line over health and safety. An uncredited celebrity intervention underlines the theme.

Don Cheadle and Benicio del Toro lead the cast with deep-etched world weariness. Both carry the weight of characters on the far end of long years scratching out a dangerous living, now with a rare chance to win big. Awash in bags of money, malevolent intentions, no-neck thugs, and uncompromising connivance, No Sudden Move luxuriates in ambitious complexity.



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Movie Review: John Q (2002)

A hostage drama, John Q spotlights the medical insurance crisis in the United States through the story of a desperate father resorting to desperate measures.

With the economy in bad shape, Chicago factory worker John Quincy Archibald (Denzel Washington) and his wife Denise (Kimberly Elise) are struggling to make ends meet. Their son Mike suddenly falls ill, and Doctor Raymond Turner (James Woods) of Hope Memorial Hospital diagnoses an enlarged heart. Mike will die without priority heart transplant surgery. 

But with John's insurance coverage degraded due to his reduced working hours, hospital administrator Rebecca Payne (Anne Heche) refuses to place Mike on the transplant list unless John and Denise can come up with a $75,000 down payment for the surgery. 

When all fund-raising efforts and applications for aid come up short, John storms the hospital's emergency room with a gun, takes hostages and demands Mike be placed on the surgery list. Negotiator Lieutenant Frank Grimes (Robert Duvall) and Chief Gus Monroe (Ray Liotta) of the Chicago Police are tasked with resolving the crisis, which escalates into a media circus.

Inspired by a system providing insufficient medical coverage for already struggling blue collar workers in one of the world's wealthiest nations, John Q is part message movie and part traditional hostage drama. With Denzel Washington reliably excellent in the leading role, director Nick Cassavetes and writer James Kearns underline institutionalized failures with plenty of passion but little panache. 

The first hour is dedicated to John and Denise's home life, Mike's sudden illness, and frantic attempts to find a financial aid solution within government channels or through community outreach. An underfunded and broken bureaucracy never comes close to providing relief, John's friends and neighbours are as broke as he is, and insurance companies are experts at the run-around. 

Meanwhile the character of Rebecca Payne is the cold and calculating face of a soulless system delivering medical care only to those who can afford it, Anne Heche portraying an administrator over-accustomed to simplifying every human transaction into a balance sheet entry.

The second half is a hostage drama trying hard to recreate elements of Dog Day Afternoon, with limited success. The media bite into an underdog story, the boisterous crowd gathers to cheer a new folk hero, the hostages are a colourful cross-section of society offering irritation and some humour, and the Stockholm syndrome predictably takes hold on the inside as Robert Duvall and Ray Liotta bungle the response outside. 

But John Q. Archibald is never less than a decent man wanting to do good by his son, and carries no genuine threat. Cassavetes has to look for tension elsewhere as the ordeal drags on, and meanders into a minefield of contrived junctures. Late in the day Washington pulls off a masterful father-son moment as a reminder of what is at stake, but John Q joins the crowd of well-intentioned causes pulverized by mechanical assembly.



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Movie Review: The Iceman (2012)

A crime drama based on actual events, The Iceman recounts the remarkable story of a mob enforcer who killed dozens of victims. While the events portrayed are astonishing, the central character remains necessarily aloof.

In New Jersey of 1964, brooding, large-framed and quiet Ritchie Kuklinski (Michael Shannon) marries the winsome and innocent Deborah (Winona Ryder). He holds a lowly job dubbing underground porn films, and commits a murder to avenge a petty insult. Local mobster Roy DeMeo (Ray Liotta) is impressed with Ritchie's coolness under pressure and hires him as an enforcer. Over the next ten years Ritchie proves to be ruthlessly efficient at eliminating Roy's enemies.

Killing is his business, business is good, and the money rolls in. The family moves to a large house and Ritchie enrolls his two daughters in private school as they grow up clueless about their father's criminal endeavours. The good times are threatened when first Ritchie refuses to kill an innocent witness, then rival mobster Leonard Marks (Robert Davi) pressures Roy to clean house after a botched drug deal. Ritchie's income is cut off, forcing him to team up with independent assassin-for-hire Pronge (Chris Evans), who operates out of an ice cream truck.

An adaptation of a book by Anthony Bruno with a screenplay by Morgan Land and director Ariel Vromen, The Iceman is a trip to the dark business of transactional death among gangsters. Beautifully recreating the 1960s/1970s era, the film almost, but not quite, succeeds in humanizing a man capable of snuffing out life with startling ease. And while Kuklinski's story is nothing short of extraordinary, his soulless responsibility for countless abhorrent acts in a repugnant underworld envelops the narrative.

Vromen seeks hints of normalcy on the home front, and the separation between family and "work" provides moments of relief from all the gangland atrocities. Wife Deborah and daughters Betsy and Annabelle go through life with Kuklinski blissfully unaware of his profession. With Winona Ryder confined to a thankless role, Deborah's naivete reflects poorly on a woman simpleminded enough to never delve into her husband's reality (he easily sells her the fiction of being a currency trader). 

A few morsels of background are offered to explain the psychology of a taciturn assassin. Vromen uses one scene of Ritchie visiting his incarcerated brother to briefly expose the abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of a Polish immigrant father. Otherwise, it is left to Michael Shannon to occasionally express anguished love for his family with theatrical emotional outbursts.

The final act is an almost incomprehensible jumble of death. Ritchie is surrounded by threats from all sides, allies become double-crossing foes, and every scene features someone expiring. The carnage may accurately represent Ritchie's violent life, but as a cinematic experience, the impact is numbing.

The Iceman kills with metronomic regularity, his heart forever frigid.



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Movie Review: Killing Them Softly (2012)

A grim gangster flick, Killing Them Softly has an overabundance of gab, some flair and insufficient substance.

It's 2008, and the great recession is creating economic chaos. Against a backdrop of politicians trying to bail out the financial sector and the looming presidential election campaign, low-level gang boss Johnny "Squirrel" Amato (Vincent Curatola) hires young thugs Frankie (Scoot McNairy) and Russell (Ben Mendelsohn) to rob an illegal large-stakes poker game hosted by mobster Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta). Australian Russell is an unreliable heroin addict and dog snatcher, but Squirrel believes that they can get away with the crime because suspicion for organizing the theft will immediately fall on Markie himself, who has admitted masterminding a previous similar heist.

The robbery is committed, and the Mob uses Driver (Richard Jenkins) as a go-between to hire hitman Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt) to dish out revenge. At first it appears as through Markie is indeed considered the principle suspect, but news filters back to Cogan about the involvement of Squirrel, Frankie and Russell. Cogan recruits fellow assassin Mickey (James Gandolfini) for extra firepower, but Mickey has issues of his own.

Written and directed by Andrew Dominik, Killing Them Softly aims for a hip Tarantino-like vibe, and generally fails. The mixture of long conversations, incessant profanity and short scenes of gory action is fundamentally unbalanced. The characters never come close to achieving the requisite level of likability to make the film work, and the tension remains at a flaccid level.

The one element that does intermittently relieve the tedium is the film's visual style. In-between all the talking Dominik and his cinematogapher Greig Fraser compose some memorable scenes, using sharp framing and ominous urban decay as a visual representation of the collapsing financial sector. The background soundtrack includes a steady stream of sound clips from President Bush reacting to the crisis and candidate Barack Obama electioneering. Their words serve as jolting reminders of how close the world's economy came to the brink and how effectively Obama's idyllic promises of a new hope lifted spirits. Nevertheless, the connection to the film's story of criminals living in a world of their own is both too obvious and completely irrelevant.

The scenes of violence are few, but are executed with panache, a cold detachment and an excess of blood and broken bones. With the f-bomb dropped every other word, Dominik confuses excess with impact.

Brad Pitt cruises through the film with a general sense of disinterest, Jackie Cogan bordering on a secondary presence. Frankie and Russell are the two most prominent characters and both hoodlums are far from capable of carrying this or any other film.

James Gandolfini suffers most from the film's lack of punch: hitman Mickey burns up an inordinate amount of time, most of it invested in exceedingly tedious stories as he drinks and whores his way to inconsequence. Much like the movie itself, Mickey is overinflated with boring talk and can't deliver when it matters.

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Movie Review: Cop Land (1997)

A police corruption drama, Cop Land builds from a simmer to a boil, driven by the riveting story of a community of cops living under the shadow of malfeasance, and brought to life by a superlative cast.

The small town of Garrison, New Jersey, located just across the Hudson River from New York City, is a hamlet almost singularly occupied by New York cops. Rumours suggest that Lt. Ray Donlan (Harvey Keitel) brokered a deal with the mob to secure low-interest mortgages for police officers, creating a safe community for officers to raise their families, in return for turning a blind eye to the mob's ties with high-level New York politicians. Garrison's local sheriff Freddy Heflin (Sylvester Stallone) is a lumbering, overweight man, happy to let Ray and his men dominate the town.

Garrison's cozy arrangement is threatened when Officer Murray "Superboy" Babitch (Michael Rapaport), Ray's nephew, tangles with a group of thugs, resulting in a car full of unarmed dead bodies on the George Washington Bridge. Ray stages Superboy's fake suicide to avoid the heat of an investigation. But the case anyway attracts the attention of internal affairs officer Lt. Moe Tilden (Robert De Niro), who has been investigating Ray's connections to organized crime for a long time. Moe tries to spur Freddy into doing his job, while undercover officer Gary Figgis (Ray Liotta) grows tired of Ray's conniving. When Superboy slips away from Ray's control and threatens to expose the hoax of his suicide, an awkward situation turns decidedly dangerous for the town of Garrison.

Written and directed by James Mangold, Cop Land is a dense, sweaty and irresistible drama. The premise of a town full of cops living on the edge of corruption and under the disinterested watch of a damaged sheriff presents a new twist on High Noon: in Garrison, all the bad guys have already arrived and settled in for the long haul. It's the wait for the emergence of the unlikely hero that causes all the tension.

Mangold's main achievement is in avoiding bloat. In a movie filled with a large number of entangled characters, complex motivations and opaque personal connections, Mangold delivers Cop Land in an efficient 104 minutes. Every scene counts and runs for just the right length. The film starts with the carnage on the bridge, and the character introductions run in parallel with the eruption of the Superboy crisis, the film demanding an immediate level of high concentration that never flags.

The fragile subtexts that tie a community together are revealed with care to create a rich tapestry of moral conflicts. As a young man Freddy lost his hearing while saving the unattainable Liz (Annabella Sciorra) from drowning. His career prospects destroyed, she completes his misery by marrying sleazeball cop Joey (Peter Berg). With Liz now preoccupied caring for young children, Joey is carrying on an affair with Ray's wife Rose (Cathy Moriarty), an indiscretion which ironically places Freddy and Ray on the same side of hating Joey.

Meanwhile, undercover specialist Figgis previously lost his partner in a jailhouse death arranged by Ray to cover up the ring of corruption, causing a lingering rift between Figgis and Ray that will only get wider as the Superboy investigation places Ray's cozy mob connections in peril.

Harvey Keitel as the psychologically tyrannical Ray and Sylvester Stallone as the meek and submissive Freddy deliver some of the best work of their respective careers. Keitel finally gets a meaty starring role and attacks it with understated venom. Stallone lumbers around town in a state of surrender, overweight, unintentionally deaf in one ear but very intentionally blind to what is going on around him until De Niro's Moe Tilden nudges him towards an awakening. Ray Liotta and Robert Patrick as one of Ray's loyalists deliver cop portrayals full of on-the-edge intensity. The remarkably deep cast also includes Noah Emmerich and Janeane Garofalo as Freddy's deputy sheriffs.

In Cop Land the thin lines between right and wrong have long since been erased. All that matters is loyalty to a badge, a concept that Ray has used to his advantage to create and rule over a fiefdom. It's the same concept that Freddy will need to come to terms with if he is ever to truly discover his potential as an enforcement officer.

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Movie Review: The Place Beyond The Pines (2012)

An intense character study spanning two generations, The Place Beyond The Pines takes an in-depth look at the complexities of responsibility, destiny and the lingering impacts of today's actions on the long term future.

In upstate New York, Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling) is a low life drifter, good at only one thing: riding a motorcycle. Luke bumps into former girlfriend Romina (Eva Mendes) and learns that her infant son Jason is his child. Although Romina has moved on and is now with another man, Luke is determined to insert himself into her life to try and be a father. To earn an income he accepts a job at the ramshackle car repair shop of Robin (Ben Mendelsohn). But Luke seeks more money to try and impress Romina and buy things for Jason. He forms a bank robbery partnership with Robin, with Luke's motorcycle riding skills helping achieve smooth getaways.

Luke's misadventures with the law eventually result in a tangle with rookie police officer Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper). A trained lawyer and the son of a respected judge (Harris Yulin), Avery is ambitious, and the incident with Luke traumatizes him. He then stumbles onto a police corruption ring led by officer Deluca (Ray Liotta). Avery's career blossoms into power and politics at the expense of his wife Jennifer (Rose Byrne). Years later, Avery's neglected son A.J. (Emory Cohen) is in high school and drifting into a life of drugs, alcohol and parties. He meets and starts to befriend Jason (Dane DeHaan), now also a teenager at the same school.

Directed and co-written by Derek Cianfrance, The Place Beyond The Pines is long, moody and humourless. It is also a gripping drama, singularly focussed on the ambitions and failures of its central characters. Cianfrance creates detailed portraits of two men grappling with what life has to offer, and finds the compelling threads that connect the actions, motivations and destinies of Luke and Avery. And it's stylishly assembled, Cianfrance finding the neon, shadows, perspectives and camera angles to give every shot dynamic potential.

The film runs for 140 minutes, and it could easily have shed 20 minutes with no loss in quality. Cianfrance is a fan of pregnant pauses and gloomy stares punctuating almost every conversation, and while he goes searching for the rivers of anger and frustration boiling under the surface of dysfunctional relationships, he also stretches the ability of his story to carry weighty loads of profound meaning at every turn.

But the themes explored by the film are elaborate and often fascinating. Luke is desperate to find some meaning to rescue his sorry life, and unexpectedly finds it in Jason. His attempts to do good only lead to worse conflicts. Avery is also looking to define himself as something separate from his father, and without looking for it finds himself at a crucial fork in the road of life. He steers towards public good, but falls victim to insidious arrogance. Both men find elaborate ways to damage the most important relationships in their life, and hurt the people they love most. The sons inherit and then amplify the emotional bruises inflicted by their fathers, either propagating or repeating behavioural patterns with the added ferocity of a new generation.

In a movie fixated on its characters the performances have to be good, and the cast delivers. Ryan Gosling has the meatier role and creates in Luke a memorable tragic loser, who will find a way to make the wrong move at every opportunity. Bradley Cooper is more reserved as Avery, but does pull off a smooth transition from shaky rookie police officer to smarmy and power-hungry politician. Gosling and Cooper share just the one scene together, as they sequentially hand-off the first two thirds of the movie.

Eva Mendes gives Romania plenty of spirit while Rose Byrne takes Jennifer to more passive aggressive territory. The final third of the film loses star power and transitions to Emory Cohen and Dane DeHaan as sons unknowingly living in the shadows of their fathers, and they are adequate.

Delving into some of the essential predispositions of the human condition, The Place Beyond The Pines is a rare combination of ambitious and intimate.

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The Movies Of Ray Liotta (2012)

All movies starring Ray Liotta and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Something Wild (1986)

Field Of Dreams (1989)

Goodfellas (1990)

Cop Land (1997)

Blow (2001)

John Q (2002)

Identity (2003)

Even Money (2006)

Smokin' Aces (2006)

Crossing Over (2009)

Date Night (2010, uncredited)

Wanderlust (2012, cameo)

Killing Them Softly (2012)

The Iceman (2012)

The Place Beyond The Pines (2012)

Kill The Messenger (2014)

Marriage Story (2019)

No Sudden Move (2021)

Cocaine Bear (2023)

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The Movie Star Index is here.