Directed by Scott Cooper. Written by Brad Ingelsby and Scott Cooper
Scott Cooper’s Out Of The Furnace, the story of two brothers who get involved with the wrong back-of-the-woods-type people, is a long, front-loaded sentence that makes an attempt at eloquence but loses itself in doing so, aiming for working class authenticity but marring its own efforts with clichéd violence.
Christian Bale’s broad shoulders carry much of Cooper’s movie as he stars as steel mill worker Russell, a quiet man of integrity working to provide for himself and his girlfriend, while bailing out his kid brother Rodney from time to time, an Army grunt desperate to get more out of life than what blue collar work will give him.
A tragic accident derails Russell’s planned future and several tours in Iraq erode Rodney’s faith in the country he served, plunging him into increasingly desperate gambits to get out from underneath PTSD, malaise, and financial hardship. At its outset and middle, Out Of The Furnace is a quiet study of resilience in the face of hardship.
It’s actually quite good at that, composing a misty ode to the Rust Belt and the quiet, hard-working people doggedly making a living there, not expecting much but still getting less as the region’s economy bleeds out before their eyes.
As Rodney, Casey Affleck is a bent nail, strong if bent low by war’s horrors, and Affleck shows his uncanny ability to exude working class toughness as well as a buried sensitivity. Few are as capable of bringing to life the North American stereotype of young white, working-class men who’d go far with a little therapy.
Willem Dafoe and Sam Shepard lend their considerable talents to the cast as well. Dafoe, with his shifty looks, portrays a small-time hustler with a code while Shepard is America’s weathered but righteous uncle, a compass needle by which to navigate in tough times. Zoe Saldaña is the movie’s only woman as Lena, Russell’s girlfriend and metaphor for redemption. The only person who lets a genuine and sincere laugh pass their lips. Such is life in a factory town.
The vast majority of Out Of The Furnace busies itself with the fickle nature of life, doing so with understated but successful determination, much like Russell. Then, much like Rodney, it tries to take a short-sighted shortcut and lands itself in a heap of trouble.
It does so by summoning Woody Harrelson as Harlan DeGroat, a drug peddler and organizer of underground fist fights in the Appalachian hills, with whom Rodney gets in deep. It’s an oafish introduction to Cooper’s wiry drama, and Harrelson delivers a bumbling performance, growling his way through threats and small-fry tough talk.
Now Russell, and Out Of The Furnace, must contend with Harlan, a loudmouth backseat driver who steers the movie on a detour into the seediness that has taken root in this fallen part of America and the gunplay it lives by. It’s not to its benefit, because Cooper’s movie still wants to to retain its earthbound nature despite the introduction of this ostensibly gritty showdown in the underworld. It makes for a strangely maudlin affair.
You almost wish Cooper and co-writer Ingelsby had sat back down and redone a draft exorcising this foolishness to instead work through the drama it has on its hands, because whatever they would have had come up with, this stellar cast surely could’ve turned into something good.
Instead, this unwieldy addition to the movie topples its structure over into overlong and Out Of The Furnace limps to its conclusion. Much like its characters, you wish Cooper and company had stayed home and focused on the family drama it clearly had in mind, but alas, the seedy lure of crime claims another victim.
Mikkel Frederiksen 