Director Scott Cooper’s second feature film is similar to his first (Crazy Heart) in that it’s a character-driven look at the lives of working class people, and it’s presented with a gritty aesthetic that, while maybe not authentic, is at least carefully crafted and evocative. This time around, instead of exploring the world of drunken country singers, we’re exploring the world of the greasy-skinned working class and how they sometimes get into financial trouble with gangsters after their economic woes lead them to making bad decisions. To be more specific, Casey Affleck is the one making bad decisions here, while playing a veteran with a case of PTSD who tries his hand at bare-knuckle fighting but is too deeply angry to take a dive when he’s told to, Christian Bale is playing his older brother, who has to step in and clean up his mess, and Woody Harrelson is playing the gangster, who’s the head of a hillbilly criminal empire that sees him trafficking in drugs as well as running said underground fight ring.
Much like Cooper’s first film, Out of the Furnace is an engine that runs on atmosphere and great performances, which is good, because this time around he’s dealing with some screenwriting problems, and the movie could have been sunk if the acting wasn’t good and the pictures weren’t so pretty to look at. Out of the Furnace is full of clunky dialogue and unnatural speechifying, it’s got some pacing issues that cause what seems like a steady build to a big moment to be undercut when the third act fizzles out, and it also includes some heavy-handed visual metaphors that very well could be attributed more to Cooper’s touch as a director than it could be to the screenwriting (though he’s a co-writer here too, so there’s not much shirking of blame possible).
Ultimately the performances do elevate the material to heights they probably shouldn’t have reached though. Bale is authentic and understated as the protagonist, Affleck never fails to ground his character even as he degenerates into being an emotional whirlwind that’s more a plot device than anything, and Harrelson is probably creepier here as the dangerous head inbred who’s putting everyone’s lives in danger than he’s ever been in anything else to this point. Add in a strong but small turn from perennial rock Willem Dafoe, welcome involvement from performers like Zoe Saldana and Sam Shepard, and a classically Forest Whitakery performance from Forest Whitaker where he talks in an awesome, grumbly voice for no reason, and Out of the Furnace ends up being worth a watch—even with all of those ham-handed scenes that juxtaposed images of Affleck getting beat up with images of a deer being skinned. They were so hacky.
