The Place Beyond the Pines

The new film from Derek Cianfrance is an unusual and unusually good multi-character crime drama. The Ryan Gosling character’s story takes up the whirlwind first part, but the narrative focus soon pivots to a young policeman (played by Bradley Cooper) who must navigate the stormy aftermath—the moral, political, legal and familial fall-out—of the Gosling segment. And the final part, 15 years after the first two parts, follows the conflicts between the two men’s sons (when the two at-risk teenagers meet at a Schenectady high school). The Gosling episode, with its crime spree and motorcycle stunts, is the most dynamic and dramatically tumultuous, but the busted relationships and dramatic crossfire of the other two episodes still draw their power from the paradoxes and clashing undercurrents of the first. Cinemark 14. Rated R.