Compares favorably to Drive . Both Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive and Derek Cianfrance's Place Beyond the Pines have in common the laconic, handsome, blue-eyed presence of Ryan Gosling. So, for that matter does the film at hand and Mr. Cianfrance's first feature, Blue Valentine, though Gosling's physical appeal was somewhat muted in that film at the service of character. The Place Beyond the Pines, in its rangy 140 minutes, is, to some extent two films in one. There is the past (presumably) in which the film begins, with it's converging fates of motorcycle ace turned bank robber Luke Glanton (Gosling) and law school graduate turned policeman Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper). Then we are taken to the place beyond the past, some 15 years on, when the film ascends (or tries, it seems) into the mythological, with its sins of fathers visiting sons and the younger generation's attempt to break away from or follow suit in their way. Ryan Gosling and his sa...