10 More Movies That Killed Completely The Wrong Character
3. Luke: The Place Beyond The Pines
The Death: The Place Beyond the Pines really is glorious cinema - for a whole 40 minutes. Then, Bradley Cooper's character Avery comes in and shoots our protagonist, Ryan Gosling's Luke, dead.
The rest of the film shows Cooper, boring and not-as-exciting as Gosling’s Luke, struggling to come to terms with what he did and ends with the two character’s children feuding and fighting. Luke’s death, however, stops this film upgrading from good to great.
Who should have died instead? Avery
When The Place Beyond the Pines hit cinema screens in 2013, people thought they knew what they were getting themselves in for. The trailers suggested that Gosling’s character would pursue a career in bank robbing to help fund his son’s future while Cooper’s NYPD officer Avery tried to track him down and reel him in.
Except, that is not the entire film. Instead, it is merely the first act. Luke does rob banks, forging a productive working partnership with Ben Mendelson’s Robin - and together they make quite a pair. The money rolls in, plenty of beer gets drank and many cigarettes are puffed on throughout the film’s opening scenes as they revel in their success and plot more ways to ensure the money continues to roll in. And then Cooper's increasing prominence sees the film fall.
Gosling is terrific as Luke, whose silent and staring demeanour is not too dissimilar to the character he played in Drive, which was released two years previously. Cooper, contrastingly, is a dud. He starts the movie as a rookie cop and his involvement in Luke's death hinders him.
For the rest of the film he spends his time regretting his actions but audiences find it hard to sympathise given Gosling was the best thing about the entire thing, while Avery's later treatment of his son ends any hope of people seeing the world through his eyes. Cooper is a great actor but his character was BORING.