Out of the Furnace (2013)
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Critics Consensus: While it may not make the most of its incredible cast, Out of the Furnace is still so packed with talent that it's hard to turn away.
Critics Consensus: While it may not make the most of its incredible cast, Out of the Furnace is still so packed with talent that it's hard to turn away.
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From Scott Cooper, the critically-acclaimed writer and director of Crazy Heart, comes a gripping and gritty drama about family, fate, circumstance, and justice. Russell Baze (Christian Bale) has a rough life: he works a dead-end blue collar job at the local steel mill by day, and cares for his terminally ill father by night. When Russell's brother Rodney (Casey Affleck) returns home from serving time in Iraq, he gets lured into one of the most ruthless crime rings in the Northeast and … More- Rating:
- R (for strong violence, language and drug content)
- Genre:
- Drama
- Directed By:
- Scott Cooper
- Written By:
- Brad Ingelsby , Scott Cooper
- In Theaters:
- Dec 6, 2013 Wide
- On DVD:
- Mar 11, 2014
- US Box Office:
- $11.3M
Cast
-
Christian Bale
as Rodney Baze, Jr. -
Woody Harrelson
as Harlan DeGroat -
Casey Affleck
as Russell Baze -
Zoe Saldana
as Lena Taylor -
Sam Shepard
as Gerald "Red" Baze -
Forest Whitaker
as Chief Wesley Barnes
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Critic Reviews for Out of the Furnace
All Critics (180) | Top Critics (44) | Fresh (96) | Rotten (84) | DVD (1)
Aims for Bruce Springsteen with its blue-collar big themes and stadium-rock emotion but ends up as a bandana-wearing cliché.
This is a movie that might have been a great drama at four hours with a more ambitious script and a director with a vision or something to say.
The movie has an undeniable, dour force, but it's basically conventional macho filmmaking, and it's extremely violent.
Good actors really earn their pay when they have to negotiate bad scripts.
A down-and-dirty revenge picture whose classy cast elevates it above its gritty, grimy trappings.
One of the best movies I've seen this year.
Looking totally unlike his fattened persona in American Hustle, the unrestrained Bale offers explosive unpredictability fuelled by family loyalties.
Beautifully shot in and around the depressed town of Braddock, Pa. Out of the Furnace is generally well acted by a top-notch cast, but a bit weak on the storytelling side.
Set in a place where the American Dream has been dead for so long that no one even thinks to question its loss, the picture features terrific performances from its game cast.
Casey Affleck proves to be one of the most talented actors working today, bringing such raw rage to his broken soldier.
Almost as if attempting to recreate the setting of a Bruce Springsteen song ... it's wonderful to look at if not necessarily to watch.
This tragic revenge drama about a pair of blue-collar brothers battered by fate in a dying rust-belt town is almost unrelentingly grim, but the cast's powerhouse performances keep you watching, as does the film's vividly atmospheric sense of place.
A working-class morality play that's unrelenting, bleak and full of indelible acting performances.
Seems bound to the conventions of crime and revenge tales to the point where everything in it works toward those conventions without much regard to thematic cohesion.
Manly words spoken by manly men: that's one of the dry pleasures of the sturdy burnt-case male melodrama "Out of the Furnace."
Intense acting doesn't save Furnce from the fires
A pungent reek of testosterone stinks up this high-toned apologetic for vigilantism and revenge. Still: great performances!
Solid, dark, tough-as-nails working-class drama about violence, desperation and Woody Harrelson's unparalleled ability to play an inbred hick.
This is tough, unrelenting and uncompromising stuff, conjuring a doomed atmosphere with honourable parallels to the 1978 classic The Deer Hunter.
Out of the Furnace feels like America regressing into the wilds of the frontier.
Out Of The Furnace is an all too rarely seen type of film: a big-feeling drama that proves that ambition doesn't have to be solely connected to the size of a film's budget and the number of special effects shots that it has.
A great and bleak look at the often limited paths to redemption for individuals in the lower class...
Christian Bale still makes this rather run-of-the-mill proposition appealing, regardless of how oddly unfashionable he may currently be.
The varied performances yield much kindling for warming the heart, especially the scenes between the two brothers.
Out of the Furnace trundles along with no apparent purpose and at several key points makes no sense.
An incursion of downplayed macho movie clichés.
Audience Reviews for Out of the Furnace
Scott Cooper's Out of the Furnace relies a little too heavy on stereotypes and the odd cliche but the character driven performances make it a worthwhile watch. It would probably loose every game of poker it played but it more than makes up for this in mood and grittiness. It's everything you want from a ballsy American drama. It's an age old story, Hollywood was built on it, Out of the Furnace is the retelling of countless classic westerns, classic War films and Noir thrillers of the 1940's. Fate, circumstance, justice ...and the American way. You say predictable, I say American classic in a new suit.
http://cinephilecrocodile.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/out-of-furnace-dir-scott-cooper-2013.html
Super Reviewer
After finally helping Jeff Bridges to a long overdue Oscar in "Crazy Heart", director Scott Cooper follows up that tale of a downward spiralling musician with another one of downward spiralling blue collar workers. Narratively, it's lacking a certain something but one thing's for sure with Cooper; he certainly knows how to bring out the best from his actors.
With a cruel twist of fate, Russell Baze (Christian Bale) lands himself in prison after a driving offence. While inside, his terminally ill father passes away and his younger, ex-soldier, brother Rodney (Casey Affleck) takes to bare-knuckle fighting to pay off debts. When Russell is released, he finds that Rodney is in over his head with a ruthless crime ring led by Harlan DeGroat (Woody Harrelson). When Rodney eventually disappears, Russell takes matters into his own hands.
If the town depicted in "Out Of The Furnace" feels familiar then that because it's likely reminding you of the same Pennsylvania steel-mill town that was the setting for Michael Cimino's "The Deer Hunter" in 1978. It would also seem that Scott Cooper is intent on regularly referencing Cimino's classic throughout this films duration; it channels a similar theme of a lack of opportunities for the characters and even though some serve their country in war (Iraq steps in for Vietnam this time) they are forgotten about when they return home. We also get to stare down the scope of a hunting rifle now and again, and there's even a scene where actual deer hunting takes place. And the point of it all, I hear you ask? Well, to be frank, I'm not particularly sure. Maybe Cooper is trying to tell us that so many years - and wars - down the line nothing has changed for these working class people. They're mere fodder and left to go back to their land of opportunity were opportunity doesn't really exist for them. This could be Cooper's intention or it could just be that I'm reading into his script a little too deeply when it's highly possible that there is no depth in the first place. Somewhere there's a commentary on the economic state of contemporary America but the message is muddled somewhat, as it veers into a generic backwoods crime thriller.
The film is a strangely frustrating experience whereby what you see in front of you is visually commanding but it's hard to connect to the character's and their plight. The weakness of the script is apparent and it's hard to grasp the film as anything more than a revenge flick that leaves a slightly nasty aftertaste. That being said, Cooper is certainly a director that has a good eye and feel for detail and he has a full command over his splendid ensemble. It's the solid performances that really make the film tick. Not that any further proof is required in terms of their acting abilities but a smoulderingly intense Affleck and a snarling, brutish Harrelson really excel and solid (all-be-it, underwritten) support is delivered from Whitaker and Dafoe. It's Bale who impresses most, though, in one of his most effective and understated roles. There's nothing heroic about him. He's simply a soulful man with a deep sense of family commitment and refuses to yield when anyone threatens that.
As much as I couldn't see what the point of the whole affair was, I still went along with it. It's deliberately paced and still manages to hold your attention. As a director, Cooper shows a lot of promise but he needs to tighten up on his writing duties. When that happens, I suspect we'll see a real improvement on this potentially solid filmmaker.
Mark Walker
Super Reviewer
No great cast could save this from becoming an excruciatingly dull and predictable experience - a pointless film with an uneven structure where the first act takes more than an hour just to shape its simple premise and whose development is nothing that we haven't seen before.
MoreSuper Reviewer
A bit too slow for me. Besides, the content isn't gripping either. Only the performances are appreciable.
1/10.
Super Reviewer
Out of the Furnace Quotes
- Russell Baze:
- We got a problem here?
- Harlan DeGroat:
- I've got a problem with everybody.
- Russell Baze:
- My Brother was suppose to meet me here a half an hour ago.
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