This is the biggest waste of talent and plot potential I can think of since perhaps 2010 when Clive Owen, Robert De Niro and Jason Statham starred in what could have and should have been a really cool film called Killer Elite. Out Of The Furnace is an incredibly dull film with a cast that refuses to do much of anything. When actors such as Christian Bale, Casey Affleck, Zoe Saldana, Willem Dafoe, Woody Harrelson, Forest Whitaker and Sam Shepard are front and center in a film...I don't expect such a long slog to take place.
The film's plot is loose and yet can't be explained without giving a lot away. Essentially---Rodney (Affleck) must take a dive for fight coordinator Harlan (Harrelson.) However, the dive or intentional loss doesn't work out because Rodney can not control his anger during fights so Rodney's brother Russell (Bale) must take matters into his own hands.
The acting is actually half decent. Everyone is giving it their all from Harrelson in his most menacing work ever to Dafoe's perfectly cast fight promoter to Whitaker as a fateful cop to Shepard as Russell and Rodney's uncle. However, the script allows the actors nothing to do. In other words---just because an actor is capable of giving a good performance does not mean that the script will allow them to do so. The script doesn't explain anything and keeps jumping back and forth with no explanation of why the audience is at the position they are at.
Writer/director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart) also makes the film look ugly which may have felt purposeful had it been explained. Cooper and first time co-writer Brad Ingelsby make all their characters way too unlikable and dumb so that by the end even the one logical and nice character does something so ludicrous that there's no one to root for anymore.
Despite the acting (which can't even be considered that great because the script doesn't allow it to be,) Out Of The Furnace is a terrible film. It's an impressively dull and slow slog through a wasteland of people that any sane audience member won't give two hoots about while watching the film and won't remember at all once the end credits roll.
(1 out of 5 Stars, The film is rated R for strong violence, language and drug content)
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