Out of the Furnace **** (2013, Christian Bale, Casey Affleck, Zoe Saldana, Woody Harrelson, Sam Shepard, Willem Dafoe, Forest Whitaker) – Movie Review

In America’s economically-depressed North-eastern Rust Belt, two brothers are struggling. While poor steel factory worker Russell lands in prison, his younger brother Rodney becomes involved with one of the most violent and ruthless crime rings in the area. Rodney is a mentally-scarred war veteran. Russell is an earnest, sincere hard worker. But the duo share a mighty bond.

Christian Bale stars as Russell Baze, who, once released and rehabilitated, takes the law into his own hands to seek justice when his younger brother Rodney (Casey Affleck) mysteriously disappears and he thinks Police Chief Wesley Barnes (Forest Whitaker) doesn’t follow through fast enough with what he sees as the appropriate law enforcement.

The movie is of a very high quality and the acting just a little bit higher even. Bale is stupendous, in a truthful, perfectly judged performance. And Woody Harrelson makes an excellent, deranged villain as Harlan DeGroat, who runs crime ring. This hick crime lord runs a Fight Club-style bare-knuckle boxing racket.

Sam Shepard is good as the Baze patriarch, Zoe Saldana is sizzling as Lena Taylor and Willem Dafoe is an asset as the crook John Petty. But it’s Whitaker and Affleck who give the very strongest accounts of themselves, with less to do than they deserve.

There’s lots of atmosphere, tension and character development in the film’s smouldering first half on the way to a sizzling, if predictable action thriller in the second half. It’s extremely well written and directed by the actor Scott Cooper, whose previous film was Crazy Heart (2009), with Jeff Bridges. There’s a very slight sense of strain in some of the writing, but not enough to harm or spoil it. Out of the Furnace is an excellent, thinking person’s crime thriller.

The film was entirely shot in and around Braddock, Pennsylvania, a former steel-industry hub that suffered a dramatic decline in the 1980s. By 2008, when the film begins, Pennsylvania had declared Braddock a distressed municipality. The boarded-up, vacated facades of a once-vibrant community provide a poignant backdrop for the story. Cooper discovered the town while on his promotion tour for Crazy Heart.

Cooper’s feature debut as actor was in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999).

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