With Ridley Scott and Leonardo DiCaprio picking up producer credits and Crazy Heart director, Scott Cooper at the helm of Out Of The Furnace you'd be pretty confident that this could be something decent. And then you find out that Christian Bale, Woody Harrelson, Casey Affleck, Forest Whittaker, Willem Dafoe and Zoe Saldana are in this too, you figure that you can settle back and enjoy what should be a rather fantastic movie.
When Rodney Baze (Affleck) disappears and the local cops don’t act fast enough, his brother Russell (Bale) decides to take matters into his own hands and try and find some justice. While he’s out trying to find some justice, its a pity he didn’t find some sort of movie too. With a story thats straight out of an 80’s action movie, this should have been a simple, straight to the point affair. Instead, we have a convoluted, disjointed and near rubbish movie. Attempting to fill the first hour with a back story that only serves as something to fatten up the running time, offering little in the way of anything from engagement to entertainment, this takes a long time to get going. And when it does get going, it stutters, stammers and staggers all over the place.
The saving grace of all of this, is the cast. Christian Bale, while not really breaking a sweat is convincing and Casey Affleck, as per usual, busts his ass and is really great. Supporting cast are also very good, especially Woody Harrelson who just laps up the role of the crazy bad guy. Unfortunately all are incredibly underused. But a decent cast cannot save a below par movie. The title alone shows little in the way of creativity and that alone should set an alarm bell off in your head. With the story as awkward as it is, at least if the movie flowed it would have been watchable. But with a pace thats equivalent to a dead snail, many will have given up by the first hour and no doubt, even more won’t make it to the end.
The only real positive in all of this is the solid performances from Christian Bale and Casey Affleck, who are way too talented to be involved in something like this turd. Out of the Furnace is about as hot as where you keep your frozen peas. Avoid!
