Out of the Furnace, 2013.
Directed by Scott Cooper.
Starring Christian Bale, Woody Harrelson, Casey Affleck, Zoe Saldana, Sam Shepard, Willem Dafoe, and Forest Whitaker.
SYNOPSIS:
When Rodney Baze mysteriously disappears and law enforcement doesn’t follow through fast enough, his older brother, Russell, takes matters into his own hands to find justice.
The career of a post-Batman Bale will garner a lot of attention; which, ironically doesn’t correspond so much with the release of Out of the Furnace. Christian Bale leads the all-star cast in this revenge thriller, notably akin to The Town and Killing Them Softly for its moody tone. The dramatic new film from Scott Cooper has had its cinematic run, now coming to a possibly wider audience on home entertainment. Aside from its amazing cast, the chances of Out of the Furnace’s generating much of a following are sadly slim. There are terrific performances to be found within the film, diluted down due to a lacklustre, stock script.
The dark heart of America has recently been explored terrifically both on TV and the silver screen. For those who cast a peering eye on its weird, frightening backstreets usually have the mettle to produce a hard-hitting piece of entertainment. The backbone of OUTF is a gritty revenge story, yet this is never the most captivating aspect of it all. Aside from the hard outer shell, OUTF has a very soft core – maintained by Christian Bale (in a role relatively unworthy of his talents) and Zoe Saldana. The impulse to invest in one character or another is not as easy here as it can be watching other films; you either want the guts and gore or the poignant (lost) love story.
There’s even a score from Dickon Hinchcliffe, painfully similar to Gustavo Santaolalla’s work (certainly for The Last of Us and The Insider), that imbues a poetic tonality to the film, jarring at points. It’s the mixture of stories and moods surrounding them that damages OUTF; there is sometimes too much to think about. Had Casey Affleck’s character not MacGuffin-ed the arc for the final hour, there would be a better film available. Willem Dafoe, Woody Harrelson and Sam Shepard would lose considerable screen time without Affleck’s narrative imposition, though you would keep the likes of Bale, Saldana and Forest Whitaker at the forefront.
A climax builds and builds up until a disappointing conclusion, never satisfying your desire to see certain relationships mend or break. Apathy lingers long after the film, worrying for Cooper (who made Crazy Heart and is currently working on a new FBI drama with Johnny Depp and Benedict Cumberbatch) and the extraordinarily talented cast. An assortment of shots, a handful of tense scenes and two stand-out performances are the film’s (very select) saving graces, never enough to override the mediocrity.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Piers McCarthy – Follow me on Twitter.
Originally published June 2, 2014. Updated April 12, 2018.
