Out of the Furnace | Little White Lies

Out of the Furnace

29 Jan 2014 / Released: 29 Jan 2014

Words by Matt Thrift

Directed by Scott Cooper

Starring Casey Affleck, Christian Bale, and Zoe Saldana

A man in a white T-shirt holding a rifle, standing in front of a wooden structure.
A man in a white T-shirt holding a rifle, standing in front of a wooden structure.
3

Anticipation.

A top notch cast in a modern-day Deer Hunter?

3

Enjoyment.

A career-best performance from Christian Bale.

2

In Retrospect.

A strong first half gives way to genre predictability.

A mag­net­ic Chris­t­ian Bale adds much-need­ed grav­i­tas to this oth­er­wise con­ven­tion­al blue-col­lar revenge saga.

There are cer­tain super­fi­cial sim­i­lar­i­ties between Out of the Fur­nace and The Deer Hunter; a steel-town set­ting; a sol­dier return­ing trau­ma­tised from war to engage in bloody, under­ground gam­bling; even an actu­al deer hunt. But beneath its sur­face, direc­tor Scott Cooper’s film shares lit­tle with Michael Cimino’s 1978 epic, despite a shared fond­ness for overt, visu­al metaphor.

Where Cimi­no (over)reached for grand themes on an even grander can­vas, Coop­er deliv­ers what essen­tial­ly amounts to a char­ac­ter dri­ven genre piece, albeit one wrapped in the ubiq­ui­tous state-of-the-nation accou­trements of its 2008 set­ting. Board­ed-up homes, loan stores and rust­ing steel mills used for bare-knuck­le box­ing bouts — a back­drop of eco­nom­ic depri­va­tion mag­nif­i­cent­ly cap­tured by DoP Masanobu Takayanagi.

It’s a film that asks ear­ly on for its moral ques­tions to be tak­en seri­ous­ly, and while in syn­op­sis would appear packed with inci­dent, Coop­er rarely feels the impulse to put his foot on the gas. That’s not entire­ly a bad thing, as it’s in its atten­tion to detail — most­ly relat­ed to char­ac­ter — that Out of the Fur­nace is at its strongest. Per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly, hav­ing recent­ly steered Jeff Bridges to Oscar glo­ry with Crazy Heart, Coop­er man­ages to fill almost every role with a name. For­est Whitaker’s hilar­i­ous voice work aside (in an oth­er­wise touch­ing, but minor role), the per­for­mances prove top notch across the board.

Woody Har­rel­son rel­ish­es the oppor­tu­ni­ty to chew on every piece of scenery in sight, while Casey Affleck offers nuanced sup­port as the trou­bled Iraq War vet lit­er­al­ly fight­ing his way out of debt to local loan shark Willem Dafoe. But it’s Chris­t­ian Bale’s career-best cen­tral turn that proves the film’s trump card. Where Bale often tends to adorn his roles with exte­ri­orised man­i­fes­ta­tions of char­ac­ter — through accent, move­ment, phys­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion — his Rus­sell Baze here, a blue-col­lar grafter try­ing to get his and his way­ward brother’s lives back on track after a prison spell for manslaugh­ter, becomes a mas­ter­class in inter­nalised emo­tion­al subtleties.

His ear­ly scenes with Affleck brim with fra­ter­nal affec­tion, but it’s dur­ing a reunion with ex-girl­friend Zoe Sal­dana after his release from prison, with his real­i­sa­tion that life has moved on with­out him, that his stead­fast com­po­sure momen­tar­i­ly breaks. It’s a heartrend­ing scene in a lead role from an actor very much at the top of his game.

But there’s final­ly lit­tle escap­ing Out of the Furnace’s genre trap­pings, espe­cial­ly as it moves into its sec­ond hour. Coop­er works hard to inject mus­cu­lar­i­ty into pro­ceed­ings, but a dri­ve-in staged open­ing aside, much of its testos­terone-fuelled bru­tal­i­ty feels over­cooked. A cross-cut police raid effects a neat edi­to­r­i­al sleight-of-hand, just as a late night drug buy proves suit­ably tense, but as it relent­less­ly pur­sues a revenge-nar­ra­tive show­down we’ve seen a hun­dred times before, one can’t help but wish such ter­rif­ic per­for­mances had some­where a lit­tle more inter­est­ing to go.

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