Ride Like Lightning

In, A Place Beyond the Pines, Ryan Gosling sports a sleeve-trimmed Metallica Ride The Lightning shirt. The shirt even has subtle story significance with the quote, “If you ride like lightning, you’re gonna crash like thunder” spoken to Gosling’s character by his partner in crime. See it. The film is awesome and the tee is just a little extra eye candy in an otherwise beautifully shot epic.

But is the shirt vintage? And is it even a t-shirt? In some scenes it looks as though it could be a sweatshirt. What ever the case may be we can rule out it from being an original from 1987 (some of which were glow in the dark.) With Gosling being over 6 feet tall and likely in the 190lb range, it’s far-fetched that a size from that era would fit as loosely as it appears to. It could however be one of the 90s re-issues that Metallica commonly distributed. And those tees were manufactured in XLs that were near today’s standards and generally made with thicker material. Tee or sweat? Real or Repro? Cast your vote below.

Check out true vintage Metallica t-shirts and cast your vote on Robert Downey Jr‘s Iron Man Avengers tee.