Film: Out of the Furnace

Director: Scott Cooper
Genre: Drama
Source: USA (2013)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Glynn Place Stadium Cinema
Grade: B-

In the time between when the movie closed and now, as I sit down to write this review, I have to admit that my feelings about the film have dipped somewhat. Leaving the theater I felt like it would probably be a B+ type of film, but now that I have had some time to stew on it I find I'm thinking more in the B-/C+ range. Out of the Furnace nearly drowns in its own gravitas, and while there are a lot of good actors acting well, I can't help but feel the characters they were given are somewhat flat. Woody Harrelson--terrifyingly mean as the awkwardly named Harlan DeGroat--really does come across as menacing and cruel (and I even missed the opening scene, which according to Adam and Josh on Filmspotting was really strong), but he doesn't come across as anything else. He does it all for the money and the drugs, one character tells us. But he spends all his time hanging out in flophouses and abandoned buildings in the woods. What's he spending on that money on? I have no clue, because the film gives us no indications that he's anything other than a capital-B capital-M Bad Man.

Christian Bale has more to do, but it would also be easy to boil his character down to "stoic and tortured." He's clearly set up as a Christ figure--showing mercy in one heavy-handed scene of parallel editing, while the other half of the scene features incredible violence--and he makes good sad faces, but I'm not sure why the film even bothered to put him through some of the stuff it did (what did his jail beating accomplish, for example, besides show us yet again that jail is not a place you want to be). I just felt like more could have been done with the character. Same goes for Casey Affleck, Forrest Whitaker, and Sam Shepherd. (After Mud earlier this year, Sam Shepherd may have finally cemented his place as the go-to "blue collar character actor for films set in small working class towns." It's a good gig if you can get it, I suppose.) Everyone acquits themselves well, but the story just doesn't really go anywhere. It just trudges down a dark path and keeps going.

In the end, good acting is just not enough to save the film, and though it was fine, it wasn't the noteworthy film I was hoping it would be. Maybe I had just been expecting too much due to the excellent use of Pearl Jam in the trailer.