Motorcycle racer, Luke (Ryan Gosling), leaves his job at a carnival globe of death to reconnect with a former lover, Romina, who secretly gave birth to his baby. With another man in the picture providing security for Romina, Luke tries to figure out a way to make enough money to win her back and ends up robbing banks. However, lives are changed when Luke is confronted by police officer Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper) on one of his outings, leaving ruin, even 15 years later, in its wake.

I caught parts of this film on television a few times, but was never able to watch the entire film until the other night. For some reason I thought I wouldn’t like it, but after watching for ten minutes I was hooked. The acting is great and the writing is phenomenal. Although there were parts of the film where I could kind of guess what was going to happen, I found the overall story of how our pasts can connect with and influence incidents in our children’s futures to be a very interesting concept.

Grade: A