Boiled Down
Tough Guy vs . Tough Guy settled, debt paid. That’s if Rodney will go through with taking the fall, improbable since he so enjoys beating the crap out of other people. There’s probably story enough there to easily fill the film’s two-hour running time. But the writers have other plans. They want to make things even more difficult for the nice people, send the problematic ones even deeper into crises, and turn the bad guys into absolute monsters. All of which could have worked, if not for some overkill in plotting. Drunk driving and a fatal car crash beget to play the ponies. When Russell spots Rodney, in broodsome prison time (the length of which is never revealed, ing mode, at an off-track betting locale, it’s quickly estabbut can sort of be followed by ever-changing beard lished that Rodney is a lost soul, and that he and Russell lengths). Post-prison predicaments lead up to a cliché share a relationship that is both tentative and close. about how people can never really change, a side story of But even before all of this familial business, the film lost love, and then to some dire situations that end up in presents its villain: the heartless, fearless, backstabbing and ensuing repercusviolence-prone and purely evil Harlan sions, along with a couple of brutal OUT OF THE FURNACE DeGroat (Woody Harrelson) who not deaths and unsurprisingly, planned Rated R only takes his girlfriend to the drive-in to retribution. Directed by Scott Cooper see Midnight Meat Train, he beats the hell The performances, notably those Starring Christian Bale, Casey Affleck, out of her and the Samaritan who tries to of Bale, Affleck and Harrelson, hit Woody Harrelson help her. high marks, and the fight scenes’ choHarlan is a small-time but powerful reography make them frighteningly thug who runs illegal bare-knuckle street fights. So does realistic. But the movie’s heart has a sort of slow beat, the less powerful but sketchy John Petty (Willem Dafoe), and at times seems lost or just misplaced. We know who the “manager” who sets up fights for loose cannon to root for and who to wish dead, but things get dragged Rodney but owes Harlan a big chunk of change from out to the point of caring less about it all. And when the previous fights gone wrong. So maybe John can loan the abrupt ending comes swooping in, it leaves us wondering hot-headed Rodney to Harlan, have Harlan bet his wad what the heck the last few minutes were about, and what on the opponent, then have Rodney take a fall. Score the final stand-alone scene even means.
Out of the Furnace offers amazing performances within a cumbersome story BY ED SYMKUS
I
f you’re going to aim for Shakespearian heights of characters and storytelling, you’d better deliver the goods. First-time scripter Brad Ingelsby, second-time writer-director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart) and a castful of actors giving it their best try hard, but ultimately come up short in this grim, gritty tale of vengeance. Set in 2008, in a sad little Pennsylvania town where locals’ aspirations usually stop when they land a lifetime job at the mill, Out of the Furnace introduces two brothers with startlingly different temperaments. Russell (Christian Bale) dutifully if unhappily works at the mill, just like his father, now slowly dying of some mill-related sickness; he goes home each night to his loving girlfriend Lena (Zoe Saldana) and keeps a protective eye out for his troubled younger brother Rodney (Casey Affleck). Rodney, a true piece of work, is recently back home from the war in Iraq, but it’s never made clear if it’s because he fulfilled his duty or he was asked to leave. What’s very clear is that he’s got problems with drinking and gambling, and that he keeps losing borrowed money
50 INLANDER DECEMBER 5, 2013