By Gail Waterhouse, News Staff 

Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper are two very obvious, very good reasons to see “The Place Beyond the Pines.” But beyond the eye candy factor, there are many more legitimate reasons to see the movie, which is being released in theaters around Boston on Friday.

The title is based on the Native American meaning of Schenectady, the upstate New York city that serves as the movie’s setting. The city acts as more than just inspiration for the title, however. Shots of neighborhoods, shops and a rundown diner give the audience the sense that the action could be unfolding anywhere in the country, yet sweeping panoramas of lush, vibrant forests give aspects of the movie an ethereal air.

This mystical feeling works in favor of the movie’s ambitious subject matter. Director Derek Cianfrance said he wanted to create a movie about fathers and sons – a large, somewhat nebulous theme one might associate more with writer and director Terrence Malick’s work. But instead of reaching cosmic proportions, “The Place Beyond the Pines” works to address existential questions through the lens of specific characters’ experiences – in this case, Gosling, Cooper and later their sons, played by up-and-coming actors Dane DeHaan and Emory Cohen.

The movie is broken up into three distinct parts, with Gosling the star of the first, as Luke, a motorcycle stunt rider for a traveling carnival. Though he has a tough exterior, complete with bleached blonde hair and a body covered in tattoos, Luke’s vulnerable side emerges when an old fling, Romina (Eva Mendes), emerges, and he finds out that while he’s been traveling, she has had his baby.

Desperately wanting to be a good father, Luke quits his carnival gig and tries to put down roots in Schenectady. But Romina has a new boyfriend (Mahershala Ali), and doesn’t want anything to do with Luke. The former daredevil has a lot of heart but few transferable life skills, so when his new acquaintance Robin (played by Ben Mendelsohn, who is skilled at playing a variety of slightly sketchy roles) suggests using his motorcycle driving abilities to rob banks, Luke jumps at the chance to get money to support his son.

The first act ends in a confrontation between Luke and rookie cop Avery (Cooper), that, without giving much else away, affects much of how the rest of the movie plays out. Avery has entered the world of public service with somewhat naïve intentions, but the corruption of the police around him and his family’s political influences lead to that naiveté being stamped out fairly quickly.

By the third act, Avery has become like the people he once scorned. This last section of the movie takes place 15 years after the first two, and Cianfrance took a risk by leaving each part as a standalone, and not intertwining the story lines, but it was an artistic choice that paid off. Instead of confusing the audience with excessive edits, Cianfrance allows the audience to see how Avery’s choices have affected his life more than a decade later, and how Luke and Avery’s legacies are affecting their children.

Luke and Romina’s son Jason (Dane DeHaan), and Avery’s son AJ, played by relative newcomer Emory Cohen, are the stars of the third act. It’s obvious from the start that both young men feel lost, their lives incomplete. Whether it’s raging hormones or a genetic tie to the past, Jason and AJ make choices without thinking, and ones, that like their fathers’ mistakes, are not to be taken lightly. Compared to the previous sections, this last storyline has a lot of action and nuance packed into it, and both young actors do a good job of keeping up. 

Though at some point in the movie the music is over the top and the messages feel heavy-handed, none of the characters turn into caricatures. From the supporting roles like Mendes’ Romina and Luke and Avery, each performance is multidimensional.

In an actors’ panel in New York City, Mendes and director Cianfrance discussed his technique of making the actors interact with each other and their roles in meaningful ways. Although it wasn’t character acting per-se, Mendes spent time working as a waitress in the Schenectady diner to prepare for her role, and Gosling had to live with his (temporary) face tattoo, after he chose to wear it on day one. He  said he regretted it later, but the decision added a level of shame and emotion to his performance.

It’s clear that both Cianfrance’s techniques and the actors’ dedication to their roles keep this movie from teetering over the edge of melodrama. Though it may not be the most profound movie ever made about fatherhood, it certainly entertains, and whether you watch it for the actor eye candy, or because you want to watch a sweeping epic unfold, “The Place Beyond the Pines” is worth the price of admission.