Review: Out of the Furnace

Christian Bale plays a working class Pennsylvania mill worker with a loving girlfriend (Zoe Saldana), and a wayward younger brother (Casey Affleck), whose debts he secretly pays off to bookie Willem Dafoe. Affleck is a troubled war veteran who just can’t seem to keep it together, Bale worries about him. Unfortunately, one drunken drive and a fatal car accident later, and Bale finds himself doing a prison stint. When he gets out, his dad has died, Saldana has left him for a nerdy middle-aged police chief (Forest Whitaker), and Affleck (who has served yet another tour in the Middle East) is in more shit than he was when Bale went to prison. Affleck (who refuses to work at the steel mill) is supposed to be taking dives in bare-knuckle fighting to pay off his debts to Dafoe, but Affleck is a stubborn SOB who just can’t seem to lay down. This earns him the psychopathic ire of intense redneck kingpin Woody Harrelson (who is a mean and violent prick…because), and it’s unlikely that even Dafoe (who also owes money to Harrelson) can help get him out of this terrible mess. Sam Shepard plays the uncle of Bale and Affleck, whilst Tom Bower is an associate of Dafoe’s.

 

Although the basic idea has merit and it’s well-acted across the board, this 2014 crime-drama from director/co-writer Scott Cooper (whose directorial debut was the overrated “Crazy Heart”) doesn’t quite come off. The execution is botched, and it’s mainly the screenplay by Cooper and Brad Ingelsby (the latter of whom later worked on “Run All Night” with Liam Neeson). Casey Affleck’s character, although interesting in many ways, proves stubborn to the point of violent stupidity, and the narrative is horribly choppy (Apparently Cooper largely re-wrote Ingelsby’s original script. One wonders how bad the original was then). The opening 20 minutes in particular are horribly written, the plot just seems to take forever to get started.

 

It’s a real shame, because there’s really something interesting going on in here (faint- though definite- echoes of “The Deer Hunter” but with pulpy, 70s exploitation movie plotting too), but it’s just not done well through no fault of the cast. Woody Harrelson walks off with the whole thing (as is often the case) in an extremely intimidating performance. He’s scary, even if he sounds more like Jeff Bridges than Jeff Bridges does. Bale, meanwhile isn’t my favourite actor but he hasn’t been this good since “American Psycho”. Similarly, Forest Whitaker gives one of his better performances of late, though that’s not saying much. He’s been pretty awful in recent years (“Repo Man” and “The Butler” are two other exceptions), and even here he’s just doing solid character work. Still, one hopes it signals a turnaround for him, because the man does have a lot of talent. Although he’s a little mumbly and seems a bit small for a fighter, Casey Affleck is otherwise very good. This poor man is messed up and one suspects early on that it won’t end well for him. Willem Dafoe is rock-solid in one of his more sympathetic roles, and even then he’s not playing a ‘good guy’ as such, he’s merely nuanced.

 

I must call out DOP Masanobu Takayanagi (“The Grey”) for his uneven work here. At times the handheld camerawork is blurry and not very nice to look at, especially when the camera is on the move. It’s not nearly as noticeable in more static shots (Apparently it was shot on 35mm Kodak film).

 

Although a brilliantly intimidating Woody Harrelson in particular stands out, this film just doesn’t work as well as you’d like. The screenplay is wonky and there’s nothing the actors can do about it. There’s a reason why this went straight to DVD in Australia. It’s just not particularly well-done, though the dead-end, go-nowhere small town Pennsylvania setting is well-conveyed on screen. Horrendous opening dirge by Eddie Vedder, sounding like a really bad Eddie Vedder impersonator (Which now that I think of it, would be a large category, wouldn’t it?). 

 

Rating: C+