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Scott Cooper directed 2009’s “Crazy Heart,” his debut feature; however, you wouldn’t know it given that the film became little more than a star vehicle for Jeff Bridges, who eventually won a Best Actor Oscar for playing a washed-up musician. If “Crazy Heart” was Bridges’ showcase, “Out of the Furnace,” Cooper’s gritty and haunting follow-up, is the movie that truly shows off its maker’s chops and personality. Starring Christian Bale and Casey Affleck as Rust Belt-dwelling brothers Russell and Rodney Baze, it’s a star-studded, yet stripped-down, tale of blood ties and twisted justice.
Rodney, a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Russell, an ex-con thanks to an unfortunate incident depicted in act one, are both failed by a system that can’t offer them favorable lifestyles, particularly in the desolate place they call home (though obliquely acknowledged, Braddock, Pa. serves as the setting). While Russell is able to settle for the steel-mill grind endured by his ailing father, Rodney won’t have it, preferring instead to get quick cash in brutal underground fights arranged by crime boss John Petty (Willem Dafoe).
Instead of relying on typical economic commentaries and familiar gangster-tinged plot lines, Cooper and co-writer Brad Ingelsby weave a surprisingly sparing brother’s-keeper yarn, whose nuances and character interplays rarely fail to achieve maximum impact. The ways in which Cooper lets visual details trickle out shows as much shrewd restraint as his unhurried reveals of major players, like a cop portrayed by Forest Whitaker and a backwoods badass embodied by Woody Harrelson.
Did these brothers make their beds, or are they strapped to them? “Out of the Furnace” allows the viewer to wrestle with that question, just as it lets the blurred lines of justice go un-judged, resulting in a primal experience enhanced by a gripping visual palette. Some cross-cutting segments prove far too on-the-nose (particularly one that pairs Rodney’s fighting with Russell’s deer-hunting), but the aesthetic is as unforgivably rough as the movie, as if the celluloid were dragged through the harsh soil of the Rust Belt itself.
Out of the Furnace
R
Three reels out of four
Opens in area theaters tomorrow
Recommended Rental
Sightseers
Unrated
Available Dec. 10
In one of the best films of 2013, Steve Oram and Alice Lowe play Chris and Tina, two sweethearts whose tour of the British Isles in a caravan gradually morphs into what might be the cinema’s weirdest riff on “Bonnie and Clyde.” Executive producer Edgar Wright’s comic nihilism is ever-present here, but director Ben Wheatley brings something more, notably a commentary on a nation’s history and class system, and a throng of gorgeous compositions that juxtaposes nasty violence. ■
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