# The Place Beyond the Pines
**The Place Beyond the Pines** is a 2013 American crime drama directed by [Derek Cianfrance](https://www.edgepedia.org/derek-cianfrance), written by Cianfrance with Ben Coccio and Darius Marder, and starring [Ryan Gosling](https://www.edgepedia.org/ryan-gosling), Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, Rose Byrne, Mahershala Ali, Dane DeHaan, Emory Cohen, Ben Mendelsohn, and [Ray Liotta](https://www.edgepedia.org/ray-liotta)[1](https://www.focusfeatures.com/the_place_beyond_the_pines). Set in and around Schenectady, New York, it tells a three-part, fifteen-year story about a stunt motorcyclist who turns to bank robbery, a rookie police officer whose confrontation with him changes both their lives, and, a generation later, the two men's teenage sons[1](https://www.focusfeatures.com/the_place_beyond_the_pines) • [2](https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/the-place-beyond-the-pines-2). The title is the translation of the Mohawk word from which the city of Schenectady takes its name[3](https://lakehighlands.advocatemag.com/2013/04/03/director-derek-cianfrance-takes-us-to-the-palce-beyond-the-pines/).
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Release | Limited release March 29, 2013 by Focus Features, expanding wide April 19, 2013; rated R; 140 minutes[1](https://www.focusfeatures.com/the_place_beyond_the_pines) • [4](https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Place-Beyond-the-Pines-The) |
| Director and writers | Directed by Derek Cianfrance (*Blue Valentine*); written by Cianfrance, Ben Coccio, and Darius Marder[1](https://www.focusfeatures.com/the_place_beyond_the_pines) |
| Principal cast | Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, Rose Byrne, Mahershala Ali, Dane DeHaan, Emory Cohen, Ben Mendelsohn, Ray Liotta[1](https://www.focusfeatures.com/the_place_beyond_the_pines) |
| Structure | A triptych set in 1997 and over the following 15 years; the third part centers on the two men's teenage sons[2](https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/the-place-beyond-the-pines-2) • [5](https://www.tomsguide.com/entertainment/netflix/netflix-just-added-a-sprawling-crime-thriller-and-its-the-best-ryan-gosling-movie-you-probably-havent-seen) |
| Box office | $21,403,519 domestic and $47,011,449 worldwide against a $15,000,000 production budget[4](https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Place-Beyond-the-Pines-The) |
| Critical reception | 79% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (227 reviews); 68 Metascore on Metacritic, classified "Generally Favorable"[6](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_place_beyond_the_pines_2012) • [7](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-place-beyond-the-pines/critic-reviews/) |
| Music and photography | Score and original piano themes by Mike Patton, alongside diegetic songs such as Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark"; cinematography by Sean Bobbitt[8](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/film-week-place-beyond-pines) • [9](https://jewlscholar.mtsu.edu/bitstreams/9462b8fc-7004-4306-b04e-a9262e986492/download) |
## Spoilers
### Story and structure
The film is set in and around Schenectady, an upstate New York city whose name Cianfrance drew on for the title[2](https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/the-place-beyond-the-pines-2) • [3](https://lakehighlands.advocatemag.com/2013/04/03/director-derek-cianfrance-takes-us-to-the-palce-beyond-the-pines/). It unfolds in three parts told in strict linear order, without flashbacks[10](https://journals.ed.ac.uk/languageandpsychoanalysis/article/download/1555/pdf_6/6019).
**Part one.** In 1997, Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling) is a motorcycle stunt rider traveling with a carnival. Passing through Schenectady, he reconnects with a former lover, Romina ([Eva Mendes](https://www.edgepedia.org/eva-mendes)), and learns she has given birth to his son, Jason. Wanting to provide for the boy, Luke quits the carnival, takes work as a mechanic with Robin ([Ben Mendelsohn](https://www.edgepedia.org/ben-mendelsohn)), a former bank robber, and joins him in a series of bank robberies, fleeing each job on his motorcycle[4](https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Place-Beyond-the-Pines-The) • [5](https://www.tomsguide.com/entertainment/netflix/netflix-just-added-a-sprawling-crime-thriller-and-its-the-best-ryan-gosling-movie-you-probably-havent-seen).
**Part two.** Luke's crimes bring him up against Avery Cross ([Bradley Cooper](https://www.edgepedia.org/bradley-cooper)), an ambitious rookie police officer balancing the job with family life alongside his wife Jennifer ([Rose Byrne](https://www.edgepedia.org/rose-byrne)) and their infant son AJ. Their confrontation goes badly for Luke, who leaves the film early in what *The New Yorker* critic David Denby, an experienced film reviewer, compared to [Janet Leigh](https://www.edgepedia.org/janet-leigh)'s early exit from *Psycho*; the story then shifts to Avery, a hometown hero who confronts corruption within a police department dominated by the menacing detective Deluca (Ray Liotta)[2](https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/the-place-beyond-the-pines-2) • [4](https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Place-Beyond-the-Pines-The) • [11](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-xpm-2013-mar-28-la-et-mn-place-beyond-pines-20130329-story.html). Avery is the only character who substantially occupies both halves of the film[8](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/film-week-place-beyond-pines).
**Part three.** Fifteen years later, Jason ([Dane DeHaan](https://www.edgepedia.org/dane-dehaan)) and AJ ([Emory Cohen](https://www.edgepedia.org/emory-cohen)), who do not know each other and are ignorant of their fathers' histories, are thrown together in high school and fall into an uneasy, combative rivalry that leads to violence[2](https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/the-place-beyond-the-pines-2). A psychoanalytic study of the film reads the plot as three generations of male lines of succession, dramatizing families of three classes positioned in alternative American dreams: dominance backed by the power of enforcement, freedom to move through space, and upwardly mobile racial integration[10](https://journals.ed.ac.uk/languageandpsychoanalysis/article/download/1555/pdf_6/6019).
## Production
Cianfrance, whose second feature *Blue Valentine* (2010) had also starred Ryan Gosling, found backing from Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, which he credited with giving him the trust, space, and time to make the film as he wanted[12](https://www.focusfeatures.com/article/getting_to_the_place_beyond_the_pines). He has described the shoot as difficult, from hurricanes to coordinating motorcycle chases[12](https://www.focusfeatures.com/article/getting_to_the_place_beyond_the_pines).
For the bank robbery sequences, Cianfrance hired the veteran stunt rider Rick Miller, who had been [Christian Bale](https://www.edgepedia.org/christian-bale)'s stunt double for the Batpod scenes in *The Dark Knight* and *The Dark Knight Rises*, to train Gosling for about two months before production began[3](https://lakehighlands.advocatemag.com/2013/04/03/director-derek-cianfrance-takes-us-to-the-palce-beyond-the-pines/). In interviews at the time of release, Cianfrance said he had been reading [Jack London](https://www.edgepedia.org/jack-london) and thinking about ancestry, tribalism, and the history of brutality in the United States[13](https://www.motionpictures.org/2013/03/writer-director-derek-cianfrance-on-the-place-beyond-the-pines/). He has said he wanted the film to play out "like a storybook", with leaps in time, quick cutaways, and a shifting topography[8](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/film-week-place-beyond-pines). The producers were Jamie Patricof, Lynette Howell, Sidney Kimmel, and Alex Orlovsky[1](https://www.focusfeatures.com/the_place_beyond_the_pines).
## Reception
The film earned a 79% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics' consensus reads: "Ambitious to a fault, *The Place Beyond the Pines* finds writer/director Derek Cianfrance reaching for, and often grasping, thorny themes of family, fatherhood, and fate"[6](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_place_beyond_the_pines_2012). On Metacritic it scored 68 of 100, with 42 critic reviews counted: 29 positive, 13 mixed, and none negative[7](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-place-beyond-the-pines/critic-reviews/).
Critical opinion divided over the triptych's final act. [Richard Roeper](https://www.edgepedia.org/richard-roeper) of the *Chicago Sun-Times* called it daring throughout and wrote that the film "earns every second of its 140-minute running time"[7](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-place-beyond-the-pines/critic-reviews/), while Denby judged it "more careless and arbitrary than well structured for the long haul" and noted that Mendes and Byrne, as the two wives, are largely sidelined in a male-centered story[2](https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/the-place-beyond-the-pines-2). Reviewers singled out the music for praise: [Sight and Sound](https://www.edgepedia.org/sight-and-sound)'s reviewer described [Mike Patton](https://www.edgepedia.org/mike-patton)'s original piano theme and the mixture of chorales and diegetic anthems as central to the film's effect[8](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/film-week-place-beyond-pines).
At the box office, the film opened in four theaters on March 29, 2013 with $279,457, peaked at 1,584 theaters, and finished with $21,403,519 domestic and $47,011,449 worldwide, about 3.1 times its $15,000,000 production budget. Universal Home Entertainment released it on video on August 6, 2013[4](https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Place-Beyond-the-Pines-The).
## Later standing
The film has been described in later coverage as one of Gosling's most overlooked performances and as a moderate box-office success that has since found audiences on streaming services; it joined Netflix's United States slate in April 2025[5](https://www.tomsguide.com/entertainment/netflix/netflix-just-added-a-sprawling-crime-thriller-and-its-the-best-ryan-gosling-movie-you-probably-havent-seen). Writers discussing Cianfrance's career have characterized it as an ambitious, at times divisive work about paternal legacy, made between *Blue Valentine* and his later features[14](https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/roofman-channing-tatum-delivers-career-best-acting-performance/).
## References
1. [The Place Beyond the Pines, Focus Features](https://www.focusfeatures.com/the_place_beyond_the_pines)
2. [David Denby, "The Place Beyond the Pines," The New Yorker, March 25, 2013](https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/the-place-beyond-the-pines-2)
3. ["Advocate movie blogger chats with 'The Place Beyond the Pines' director," Lake Highlands Advocate, April 3, 2013](https://lakehighlands.advocatemag.com/2013/04/03/director-derek-cianfrance-takes-us-to-the-palce-beyond-the-pines/)
4. [The Place Beyond the Pines (2013), Box Office and Financial Information, The Numbers](https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Place-Beyond-the-Pines-The)
5. ["Netflix just added an epic crime thriller," Tom's Guide, April 6, 2025](https://www.tomsguide.com/entertainment/netflix/netflix-just-added-a-sprawling-crime-thriller-and-its-the-best-ryan-gosling-movie-you-probably-havent-seen)
6. [The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_place_beyond_the_pines_2012)
7. [The Place Beyond the Pines critic reviews, Metacritic](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-place-beyond-the-pines/critic-reviews/)
8. ["Film of the week: The Place Beyond the Pines," Sight and Sound, BFI](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/film-week-place-beyond-pines)
9. [Arts and Entertainment reviews, Middle Tennessee State University (Walker Library digital scholarship)](https://jewlscholar.mtsu.edu/bitstreams/9462b8fc-7004-4306-b04e-a9262e986492/download)
10. [Hunter (2016), "Three Family Lines," Language and Psychoanalysis, University of Edinburgh journals](https://journals.ed.ac.uk/languageandpsychoanalysis/article/download/1555/pdf_6/6019)
11. [Betsy Sharkey, "In 'The Place Beyond the Pines,' society is the bad guy," Los Angeles Times, March 28, 2013](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-xpm-2013-mar-28-la-et-mn-place-beyond-pines-20130329-story.html)
12. ["Getting to THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES," Focus Features, January 29, 2013](https://www.focusfeatures.com/article/getting_to_the_place_beyond_the_pines)
13. ["Writer-Director Derek Cianfrance on The Place Beyond the Pines," The Credits (motionpictures.org), March 2013](https://www.motionpictures.org/2013/03/writer-director-derek-cianfrance-on-the-place-beyond-the-pines/)
14. ["Channing Tatum Delivers Career-Best Acting Performance in 'Roofman'," The Daily Beast, 2024](https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/roofman-channing-tatum-delivers-career-best-acting-performance/)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Crime, thriller, and mystery films (individual works) › 2010–2014 films › Titles M to W*
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