Director Scott Cooper follows up 2009's hugely successful "Crazy Heart" with another slice of Americana, albeit in a whole new facet.
"Out of the Furnace" is a gripping drama set in the industrialized town of Braddock, Pennsylvania. Accompanying this blue-collar backdrop is a lawless underground subculture of people tucked away in the mountains of Appalachia. The portrayal of these two downtrodden sects paints an unrelenting portrait of American underground culture in the Rust Belt.
Christian Bale plays Russell Baze, a hard-working, steel-mill lifer with dreams of escaping his economically dire town. His brother, Rodney (Casey Affleck), has completed four tours in Iraq and struggles to keep his head above water financially. The wages of war have done a number on his psyche, and he resorts to underground fighting rings in order to scrounge up some money.
On the other side of the story is Curtis DeGroat, played brilliantly by Woody Harrelson. DeGroat is a meth dealer with a short fuse and a propensity toward violence. Living seemingly outside the reaches of the law in the anarchy-laden Appalachian Mountains, DeGroat runs a series of illegal operations and won't hesitate to kill anyone who crosses him.
Due to a series of unforeseen circumstances, Russell lands himself in prison and, upon his release, learns of his brother's hapless financial schemes. If you hadn't guessed it yet, Rodney eventually goes missing after fighting in one of DeGroat's bare-knuckle brawls and Russell must seek justice.
The disparity between DeGroat and Russell is intensely suspenseful, and Cooper does an excellent job of building upon the yin and yang of both characters. Similar to that of an old Western, Russell takes on the man in white role whereas DeGroat is the man in black, so to speak. The two couldn't be any more unequivocally opposed to one another, and the tension between the two characters festers till the bitter end.
In its simplest form, "Out of the Furnace" is a tale of good versus evil, although waiting for the good to prevail isn't without its own set of trials and tribulations. DeGroat is so morally reprehensible and he gets away with so much for nearly the entire film that when it comes time for Russell to enact his revenge, there is a sense of total and abject jubilation. That feeling of pure elation hinges on the fact that DeGroat's character is nearly void of morality — a process in and of itself that is slow and unrelenting but ultimately satisfying.
The Achilles heel of the film would be its inability to utilize the immensity of its cast. The meticulous and brilliant characterizations of the DeGroat and Russell characters leaves out the possibility of building upon the supporting cast. Of course, the name alone suggests that the rest of the characters are there to accompany the leads, but when you cast Forest Whitaker, Willem Dafoe and Zoe Saldana as supporting cast members, it becomes difficult to single out the lead characters.
Failing to include everyone in a sufficient and productive manner with household names such as those is understandable. However, perhaps the film could have benefited from more anonymous casting choices a la "Winter's Bone."
All in all, "Out of the Furnace" is an above-average thriller rife with vigilante justice and cold-blooded revenge. Not your typical movie for this time of year, but definitely a film worth its praise.