MOVIE REVIEW - Out Of The Furnace

What a cast!   Christian Bale, Casey Affleck, Woody Harrelson, Forest Whitaker, Sam Shepard, Zoe Saldana and others.  But overall, what a shame.

The New Out Of The Furnace looks like this should be one of the years best movies.  The previews show a seemingly powerful story, big performances and terrific cinematography.  Well some of that is true, and to be fair this is not a wash-out.  But this is an opportunity missed to be truly great.

This is a story that takes place in extreme rural Pennsylvania.  It's the story of 2 brothers, Russel (Bale) and Rodney (Affleck).  They grew up in this tiny steel town that has seen far better days and times.  Russel is older, he drinks too much and dreams too little and ends up following in his dying father's footsteps and works at the local steel mill that is in serious decline.  Rodney is a 4 tour of duty Iraqi army war veteran, and is suffering from PTSD, but he doesn't know it, and neither does his highly uneducated family or friends.

Rodney returns home, and begins gambling and runs up a huge debt to a local bookie (Willam Defoe) who himself is a bit of trash.  The bookie is in huge debt to a huge piece of dirt named Harlan DeGroat (Harrelson).   He is a man from the mountains of rural New Jersey who stages rigged bare knuckle fight clubs, swindles gamblers, and takes and deals drugs.  He is an angry man, and runs his little ring deep in the mountains and operates way outside that law with a brutal mantra.

Rodney decides to go to the Jersey mountains to fight in one of these rigged fights to settle his and his bookies debt, and ends up missing.   Russel finds out he is up there and sets out to find his younger brother, even taking on DeGroat and his band of horrible people.  This is simply a big brother/little brother movie. Should be noted this is loaded with unapologetic violence, and some grizzly images.   This movie also puts its muddy boot squarely on your neck and steadily applies more pressure to your throat as it goes along.

This is authentically filmed deep in the woods and mountains, and being fair again, the sets and backdrops of this movie are excellent.  You are there and can feel and smell it.   The costumes and makeup, make all of these characters beaten and weathered and that adds to the authenticity.  There is not much of any musical soundtrack, but this movie is wonderfully filmed.

The downfall of Furnace, is the pacing and story.   This just plods along for much of it, and there are many moments you are wondering if it's going to move forward at all.  This movie really stumbles out of the gate, and takes far too long to gain momentum.  As it finally does get off the canvass, it does get better, but you may be too far uninterested by then.   And the ending is a bit silly and not very believable as our lead heroic characters lose  their authenticity and that hurts too.

Woody Harrelson though is the star of this movie.  He is amazing as the truly horrible DeGroat.  He is ruthless, scary, and very compelling.  This movie needs a great villain, and he is one.  I think his performance in many years could be Oscar worthy, but I am not sure this movie overall will not get enough notoriety for him to get the fanfare he deserves.  This is one of his finest roles in a movie that is not one of his best.

Out Of The Furnace.   There is a some good here, but will be too depressing for some. In the end with the cast assembled this is a bit disappointing.