10 Movie Scenes That Brilliantly Subverted Expectations
1. Luke Dies Early - The Place Beyond the Pines
The Place Beyond the Pines is one of the most criminally underappreciated films of the entire 2010s, an epic, time-hopping crime drama with some truly ambitious tricks up its sleeve.
For though the film's trailer focused on the cat-and-mouse game between bank robber Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling) and rookie cop Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper), that's really not what the movie's about at all.
After all, the first act climaxes with Cross shooting and killing our apparent protagonist Glanton, mere moments after Cross is first introduced.
Act two shifts to focus on Cross and how he deals with the shooting, before act three jumps forward 15 years into the future to explore the friendship between Glanton and Cross' teenage sons (Dane DeHaan and Emory Cohen).
Though some felt misled that Gosling, the movie's undeniable marquee star, exited the story so early, it left audiences completely, enticingly rudderless for the rest of the runtime, with no idea of where it would all go.