Out Of The Furnace

OUT OF THE FURNACE

Director : Scott Cooper

Year : 2014

Genre : Thriller

Rating : **1/2

 

Despite a high calibre of cast and the extraordinary talents of a very adept director and storyteller, 'Out Of The Furnace' is a surprisingly bland and forgetful thriller that fails to hold our attention or spark our imaginations. Shot in a 1970's film noir style, the movie succeeds as a visual experience but as a cinematic, immersive one,  it it falls short. Starring Christian Bale, Casey Affeck, Zoe Saldana, Woody Harrelson and Willem Dafoe, 'Out Of The Furnace' has a very tight and interesting premise but thanks to a dreary screenplay, little character development and an unsatisfying finale, the film turns out to be unusually inert.

Christian Bale plays Russell, a loving and hard working man whose life is torn apart when he causes the death of a family while driving under the influence of alcohol. After leaving prison, Russell is reunited with his beloved brother Rodney (Affleck); an ex Iraq soldier who has taken to bloody and brutal bare knuckle fights. If that's not bad enough, he soon discovers that his once loving wife (Saldana) has found solace in the arms of a local policeman. One day, a battered and bruised Rodney mysteriously disappears and when the law indignantly turns it's back on the case, Russell takes matters into his own volatile and unpredictable hands. 

Thanks to the unparalled eye of director of photography Masonubo Takayanagi (whose work also includes 'The Grey', 'Warrior' and 'Silver Linings Playbook'), 'Out Of The Furnace' visually evokes the ghosts some of the most brutal and disturbing works in recent cinema history such as 'No Country For Old Men', 'A Winters Bone' and 'Prisoners' as well as earlier seminal thrillers such as 'The Deer Hunter' and 'Deliverance'. Shot in drab browns and rustic greys, the film manages to transport us to a world of crime and working class ethics, helping us to identify with the poverty and lack of progress present in the settings and locations.

Having laid down the groundwork for a contemporary southern western, director Scott Cooper accentuates the air of dread and melancholy through the use of atmospheric establishing shots and pensive close ups on the various actors ravaged faces. Underpinning this overwhelming aura of inevitable catastrophe, we have Dickon Hinchcliffe's thunderous but subtle score which helps to drive the imagery and themes of revenge and self sacrifice into our subconscious. Unfortunately, the visual flair and beautifully hypnotic music are much more memorable and interesting than the story or any of it's characters.

As mentioned earlier all of the actors in 'Out Of The Furnace' are terrific screen presences. The always reliable Christian Bale once again gives a remarkable performance as a man who is broken down by society and the turbulent events that have shaped his adult life. Like every main character in the film, Russell is a man who is looking for retribution and a way to vent his volcanic anger. However unlike the others he cannot express his true emotions and let go of his psychotic, possibly murderous rage.

On the other side of the coin, Casey Affleck is an uncontrollable maelstrom of unknowing and unfathomable anger who has taken to beating strangers to a bloody pulp. Unfortunately unlike Bale, Affleck's character, or for that matter any of the other characters, are given no motivation or any explanation for the way they are or how they act. On his own, Casey Affleck can be a fantastic actor and movies such as 'Gone Baby Gone', 'Ain't Them Bodies Saints' and 'The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford' have really allowed him to showcase his fantastically nuanced talent. In 'Out Of The Furnace' however, he really has no emotional value whatsoever and only serves to be the main narrative kickstarter.

The supporting cast is just as talented but equally as vapid as it's central cast. Woody Harrelson is certainly threatening but not at all interesting as a brutish and single minded sociopath, Willem Dafoe who is usually so indelible on screen is completely forgettable as a crooked bookmaker while Forest Whitaker and Zoe Saldana are practically reduced to extended cameo roles as a renegade police officer and ex lover respectively.

If the characters had been more involving and the narrative had explored more of the various motivations, then maybe 'Out Of The Furnace' could have been a more remarkable piece of work. I love Scott Cooper as director and I love the entirety of the cast, so it is disappointing to say that the movie is nothing more than a beautiful looking but empty tome that is only recommendable for Christian Bales reliably strong central performance and Takayanagi's extraordinary cinematography.