Out of the Furnace

Out of the Furnace is the newest movie from director Scott Cooper, the man behind the Oscar winning performance of Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart. Scott delivers a movie that was brutally violent for no good apparent reason. There is little to no dialogue and the film will leave you unfulfilled and disturbed. I give Furnace two buckets of Killer Korn just because of the cast, but that's it.











Out of the Furnace got two buckets of Killer Korn from me out the gate due to it's impressive cast. Boasting two Oscar award winners, an icon, and a slew of talented actors, and being directed by the man who did Crazy Heart, I really thought Furnace was a can't miss movie. I was completely dead wrong about that. It got two buckets from the start but it stalled there. The premise of the film is a revenge film but that just doesn't wash in the end. Woody Harrelson plays the drug addled, murdering psychopathic Harlan DeGroat. He lives in the mountains of southern New Jersey and as Forrest Whitaker's character Police Chief Wesley Barnes stated, "they have their own brand of justice up in them hills". Harlan throws bare knuckle fights up in them hills (I know, I said the same thing) and Rodney Baze Jr., played by Casey Affleck wants some of that action. He more or less needs the action due to owing a lot of money he just doesn't have.

Rodney's brother Russell Baze, played by Christian Bale is the overprotective older brother of Rodney who is about to do yet another tour in Iraq. Russell gets himself into a deadly auto accident and does time behind bars. How much time no one truly knows because the passage of time is done so horribly in Furnace that you only know things have changed because Russell's father passes away and his beautiful girlfriend Lena Taylor, played by the lovely and talented Zoe Saladana is now spending her time with Chief Barnes. Willem Dafoe plays John Petty, bar owner and gambler in his own right and he owes Harlan a considerable amount of money. He then introduces Rodney to Harlan and that's when everything goes to shit.

Out of the Furnace is a great looking movie if you like small town USA. I would even dare to say it's a well acted one, though Sam Shepard is completely wasted in this movie. The problem with Furnace is the story. Out of the Furnace is so ridiculously over the top bloody for no apparent reason, and the violence was completely unnecessary. Another issue I have with the movie is Russell's character. What he does at the end of the film seems completely out of his character, mainly because we aren't given any indication that he can or will get that dark and dirty. He's a nice guy throughout the entirety of the movie, until the end and I don't know about anyone else but it left me scratching my head and that is NOT a good sign. Skip Out of the Furnace completely, you will be glad you did.