The rest of the film follows the same path, with showy technical skill put in service to a story that aims for Great American Novel status even as it cares at all times for plot. Each cut in the first act adds another broad stroke to its class caricature: Luke heads to the house of old flame Romina (Eva Mendes), only to discover he has an infant son, which leads him to Romina’s place of work, naturally a greasy spoon diner. The whiplash-inducing jumps of cliché only get worse when Luke, with hick accomplice Robin (Ben Mendelsohn) swiftly turns to bank robbery to provide for his child. This turns into an entirely different set of reductive class signifiers when Luke’s criminal ways bring him, and the focus of the narrative, into contact with police officer Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper) and a lurch into middle-class woes that, gosh darn it, don’t look so different after all.
