Out of the Furnace – review

The gritty blue-collar picture is the closest Hollywood comes to Euro-style miserabilism: a gloomy world of guys from the wrong side of the tracks, perhaps a young cop from a close-knit family and tight-knit community, whose ageing, ailing dad was also a cop. Often there is a full-dress police funeral at some stage, complete with skirling bagpipes. Director and co-writer Scott Cooper – who in 2009 made Crazy Heart, which earned Jeff Bridges an Oscar for his portrayal of an ageing country singer – has now created a movie broadly in this tradition, drawing on the classic forms established by Elia Kazan and Michael Cimino. Powerhouse performances make up for a few cliches and plot-holes. Christian Bale plays Russell, a steelworker who occasionally hunts deer with his uncle Gerald (Sam Shepard). Russell is worried about his troubled brother, Rodney (Casey Affleck), traumatised by his military service in Iraq and now taking part in bareknuckle fights organised by sinister hillbilly Harlan DeGroat (Woody Harrelson). There is big money to be earned by taking a dive in these fights and making it look convincing – which means getting half-killed. The plot is slightly undermined by the fact that DeGroat, so brutally vindictive in the matter of money, seems slow in trying to collect an outstanding debt. But Bale carries the movie, especially in a powerful and moving scene in which his ex-girlfriend Lena (Zoe Saldana) has to tell him something which rules out the possibility of them ever getting back together. It's a picture with weight – perhaps more weight than bite.