OUT OF THE FURNACE 2013
BY
SCOTT COOPER
Christain Bale is a wonderful elder brother.As Dicky Eklund
in The Fighter,he proved an ideal foil to Tom Hardy’s Micky Ward.In Out of The
Furnace,a highly ambitious film,he plays a sincere,honest-to-God and caring elder brother to perpetually
troubled Casey Affleck and a son to an ailing father.The scene is set in Bradford,Pennsylvania,amidst the steel mills
losing out to the Chinese competition.Bale is a mill worker himself,much like
his father and content with his life.Casey (always disturbed Casey) is a
soldier ,who finds it tough to adjust to life away from Iraq and ends up raking
gambling debts.
The film is packed with Wiliam Dafoe,Woody Harrelson,Forrest
whittaker and Zoe saldana as well.Zoe dumps Bale when the latter goes to prison
for causing an accident,and ends up marrying Forrest,who is assigned the case
of Casey’s sudden disappearance.Affleck returns from Iraq and has trouble
adjusting to normal life.He fights bare knuckle boxing bouts for William Dafoe,and
faces conscience pricks and ego issues in ‘taking dives’ and doing Dafoe’s bidding.In order to pay off his huge
debts ,Casey forces Dafoe to organise a big
money fight ,run by a redneck psycho,Woody Harrelson.
This is such a huge collection of stars that despite the
ordinary pace and plotline,it is hard to turn away.Bale and Casey have a very good chemistry
onscreen.The latter also shares some great screentime with Dafoe.Forrest and
Saldana have good cameos.Harrelson plays a psycho with aplomb.But the film
falters because it has nothing much to offer beyond a bleak recession-hit
landscape,clichéd lines and sub-original plot.The mills are incidental,Casey’s
debts seem unnecessary,Bale’s accident seems contrived and the Dafoe-affleck
execution by Woody seems needless.The film becomes quite sluggish and
predictable towards the climax,and ends up delivering far less than it
promised.
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