Movie Review - Out of the Furnace

Out of the Furnace ** (R) Following his great success in Crazy Heart, Scoot Cooper directed and co-wrote this attempt at a gritty, violent drama, set among blue collar guys in the Rust Belt. Christian Bale tries to get by working at the steel mill until one bad moment lands him in prison. That’s when he loses his girlfriend (Zoe Saldana) to the town’s police chief (Forest Whitaker). His kid brother (Casey Affleck) suffers from some form of PTSD after serving a couple of tours in Afghanistan. His troubles land him in debt to the local gangster (Willem Dafoe), with bare-knuckle boxing his only apparent path to solvency. That unfortunately gets him mixed up with a much worse thug (Woody Harrelson). When Affleck vanishes, Bale is driven to find out what happened.

A couple of fine performances are diminished by a plot that drags before reaching a dubious conclusion. Cooper seems to be dangling more characters, emotional issues and story threads than he can handle. Bale delivers his usual competent turn. Whitaker and Saldana are shortchanged, compared to the excellent work from Harrelson and Affleck in playing difficult roles. The result is more depressing than entertaining or enlightening about the fictional people we meet, or the actual milieu they try to depict. (12/6/13)