Review of Out of the Furnace (2013) by David N — 11 Jan 2014

It's difficult to put into words just how much wasted potential is encapsulated in Out of the Furnace. With Christian Bale, Zoe Saldana, Woody Harrelson, Casey Affleck, not to mention several other big names in minor roles, this piece of pablum posing as nihilistic art has no right to be as bad as it is. Unfortunately, it features a completely uninvolving plot, monotonous pacing, and dialogue worthy of a Nicolas Winding Refn movie. I don't recall ever seeing a movie where I cared as little about the characters as I did here. This arrogant, pointless, and utterly vapid film did nothing for me, to the point where I actually can't wrap my head around why it was made. Congratulations, Christian Bale-- You've made all the other great work you've done this year seem bad as well retroactively.

Out of the Furnace is a poorly-named story of a man (Bale) who hunts down the guy who killed his brother in a tale of vengeance and retribution. Or, at least, that's what it should have been. Actually, it's just a badly paced load of manure that clocks in at less than two hours, but feels like two years. The film starts off establishing the relationship between Bale and his brother (Affleck), but suddenly skims over five years when Bale is put in prison for his role in a car accident. Why was this even in the movie? There's absolutely no reason. After this completely pointless time filler subplot has been concluded, Bale's girlfriend (Saldana) has moved on and is now going out with a cop (Forest Whitaker). There are so many jumbled, incoherent subplots throughout this thing that you are forced to stop paying attention to any of them, just to preserve your sanity. And the worst part is that none of them go anywhere. The film ends with virtually no development for most of the minor characters. This is, at its core, a 20-minute movie stretched out into two hours.

The movie is also very counterintuitively named. Sure, "furnace" is supposed to be a metaphor. But why not just call it "Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire?" Or better yet, "Murderous Bloodhounds of the Appalachian Mountains?" Anyway, it takes about an hour for the actual plot to develop, and by the time it does, the movie has exhausted everyone who is trying to slog through it. The dialogue is slow-moving and essentially unimportant to the story (this could have been a silent film, because all Bale and Affleck do is stare at each other for a while). I'm not asking for mind-blowing action sequences here, but I would appreciate some characters I cared about, an even mildly intriguing story, and some dialogue... please, some well-written dialogue. It's even more disappointing when you realize that director Scott Cooper also gave us Crazy Heart, one of the best modern character studies of all time. And now he follows it up with this? Ugh.

A large portion of this movie consists of Affleck beating the crap out of people, and the people then beating the crap out of him. It's almost as if Cooper had some sort of personal vendetta against rural Appalachian people, because nearly everyone in this movie is a violent, foul-mouthed drug addict who kills people because he can. In fact, the film sparked some controversy, with the Ramapough Lenape Nation in Appalachia saying that it depicted their people as "lawless, drug-addicted, impoverished, and violent." Normally I'd say that this is overreacting, but it's somewhat weird how often the film feels the need to inform us that the bad guys are subhuman neanderthals. Harrelson plays the redneck who eventually kills Affleck, but the movie glosses over his whole character in favor of showing us random acts of depravity that he commits. Within the first five minutes of the movie, he has already beaten a man to death and tried to choke a woman with a hot dog. Why bother showing us this? We're going to figure out on our own that he's bad anyway. Anything else feels over-the-top and strangely obsessive.

The acting is the only good thing I can say about this movie. Although all the dialogue is atrocious, the fun that the stars are having with each other is palpable. Bale and Affleck make a strong pair (even if Affleck is a shit actor who always sounds like he's on the brink of tears), and Harrelson delivers with a great performance that sadly had to take place in an otherwise uneventful and bland movie. Much like 2012's Killing Them Softly, this movie creates bleak visuals and an overwrought plot that drag the movie down, eventually crushing everything in it under the weight of its own self-importance. We are expected to take this movie seriously solely because it takes itself seriously. And that's something I can't abide.

Final Score for Out of the Furnace: 4/10 stars. This is by no definition a good film-- In fact, in many ways it's a terrible one. But with a cast like this, I'm willing to go easy on it. But be warned: Unless you enjoy being bored to tears by poorly-paced and uninvolving dramas that have no redeeming values other than the cast that got tacked on to them, I suggest that you stay away from this thing. It's likely to be hailed as "underrated" and "a masterpiece" by pretentious indie awards ceremonies everywhere, but this belongs in the same category as The Place Beyond the Pines: Bleak, boring, and not even close to being entertaining.