Review of Out of the Furnace (2013) by Trent M — 26 Jul 2015

Just watched "Out of the furnace" starring Christian Bale. Bale plays Russell Baze, a blue collar guy who goes to prison for killing someone while drunk driving. When he gets out a couple years later he finds out that he's lost his girl, and his brother (fresh out of the army) is street fighting.

Casey Affleck who does a believable job as Rodney Baze gets caught up with a meth addled hillbilly crime boss (played brilliantly by Woody Harrelson),and that's when Russell jumps in and tries to save him.

It was half way decent but kind of forgettable for the fact that it could have been so much more. It could have been a really good drama if they had stretched it out for another hour and added more character development and cut out all the Pearl Jam songs and all the cliches.

Actually, not even all of them, just at least half of them (there's so many). Instead, what we got was an over the top melodramatic, predictable revenge film, based on a half baked script that tries to touch too many bases too fast and even all the great actors couldn't save it.

I wanted to spend more time with Woody Harrelson's character "Harlan" and his mountain folk, that alone could have been a movie all in itself. But the filmmakers thought four scenes was enough.

The film's director Scott Cooper brought us the great country music drama "Crazy Heart", so we know he is capable of bringing us southern dramas about flawed characters. But, unlike "crazy Heart", this movie lacks the strong source material needed.

This movie reminds me of "The Counselor", a film with so much potential and great acting but lacked the script and directing to bring it to greatness.