Out of the Furnace Review
Hey kids it's Brandon here with another review of yet another movie. Now Out of the Furnace is so adult oriented, so brutal and dark you may not even want to read the review. In fact I insist that you go watch Adventure Time now while the adults stay and read about how amazingly badass this movie is. Ok folks now that the kiddies are gone lets talk about Out of the Furnace. This is the best indie film to come out this year and it was towards the end of the year too.
The plot of this movie centers around Russell Baze a good hard working American, this guy is as American as apple pie. He is a lower middle class guy, who works everyday and has himself a hot ass girlfriend. His life wouldn't be half bad if he didn't have his fucked up gambling brother to deal with all the time. Now his brother Rodney isn't your run of the mill addict this guy served four tours in Iraq and gambling is he coping mechanism for seeing and doing the things he has done. Well as you might have guessed Rodney gets into bed with the wrong kind of people and he ends up disappearing. Russell has an idea who preformed this disappearing act, which was crazy ass, drugged up hill folk that live in the hills of New Jersey. These guy are cartoonish crazy no ,no they are realistic crazy. The rest of the movie ends up being this rather tense yet slow paced revenge film. The ending fits the movie so well I damn near stood up and clapped myself. I do have to say one thing did bother me and some films have been doing that to me recently. They have an unexplained amount of time between the scenes in this movie. This film's first half jumps around in time so much so that all I can tell you is that many years take place in the first half of this movie. That is a minor complaint in comparison to the fantastic unexpected story telling that takes place here.
The acting stands out in this movie by far. Christian Bale is Russell and he at times is a little too quite delivering his lines I think he did a great job. Bale doesn't bring anything new or different to the table he does in fact show the pain of the shit he is going through very well. Casey Affleck is Rodney Baze and he is still his basic character of being a whinny bitch but at least in this movie you actually feel sorry for him. He shows so much emotion in this movie even if it's super subtle. I may not be his biggest fan but he is outstanding in this film. Last you have the very unexpected star in this movie Woody Harrelson. He is Harlan DeGroat who is the leader of the hillbillies. This guy is fucking insane. He is the bat shit crazy guy who will damn near kill you for just looking at him cross ways. Harlan is the more realistic version of Trevor (from GTA 5). He is this meth dealing, bookie that if you see him walking towards you, you turn around and walk the other way. The only actor I felt just didn't land his performance was Forest Whitaker. He is Chief Barns a good cop with a raspy ass voice. The voice is what threw me off, if he is trying to act like a badass by making his voice all raspy then he fails. It came off as someone trying to do their best Batman voice.
The Director of this film is new to directing this is his second film he has ever made. Scott Cooper (no relation to Bradley Cooper) has made an amazing film here. I am so excited to see him become a huge thriller director like Nolan and Scorsese. This guy takes a main character that everyone can relate to and put him in these situations that you end up feeling sorry and hoping that he can overcome these obstacles. He also has an antagonist that you loath so much that you just want to see them fall so badly.
In the end it saddens me that this movie is going to be overlooked by the general audience with all the competition out right now. Movie buffs if you haven't seen this movie please go see it. This movie is well worth the price of admission, this is dark, thrilling and will have twist that no one sees coming. I give this a 4.5 out of 5 because it isn't a perfect movie and drags just a touch in the beginning. Other than that this is a must see in theaters so please go see this film. So that's it everyone if you have seen this film I'd love to talk about it in our forums page.
The plot of this movie centers around Russell Baze a good hard working American, this guy is as American as apple pie. He is a lower middle class guy, who works everyday and has himself a hot ass girlfriend. His life wouldn't be half bad if he didn't have his fucked up gambling brother to deal with all the time. Now his brother Rodney isn't your run of the mill addict this guy served four tours in Iraq and gambling is he coping mechanism for seeing and doing the things he has done. Well as you might have guessed Rodney gets into bed with the wrong kind of people and he ends up disappearing. Russell has an idea who preformed this disappearing act, which was crazy ass, drugged up hill folk that live in the hills of New Jersey. These guy are cartoonish crazy no ,no they are realistic crazy. The rest of the movie ends up being this rather tense yet slow paced revenge film. The ending fits the movie so well I damn near stood up and clapped myself. I do have to say one thing did bother me and some films have been doing that to me recently. They have an unexplained amount of time between the scenes in this movie. This film's first half jumps around in time so much so that all I can tell you is that many years take place in the first half of this movie. That is a minor complaint in comparison to the fantastic unexpected story telling that takes place here.
The acting stands out in this movie by far. Christian Bale is Russell and he at times is a little too quite delivering his lines I think he did a great job. Bale doesn't bring anything new or different to the table he does in fact show the pain of the shit he is going through very well. Casey Affleck is Rodney Baze and he is still his basic character of being a whinny bitch but at least in this movie you actually feel sorry for him. He shows so much emotion in this movie even if it's super subtle. I may not be his biggest fan but he is outstanding in this film. Last you have the very unexpected star in this movie Woody Harrelson. He is Harlan DeGroat who is the leader of the hillbillies. This guy is fucking insane. He is the bat shit crazy guy who will damn near kill you for just looking at him cross ways. Harlan is the more realistic version of Trevor (from GTA 5). He is this meth dealing, bookie that if you see him walking towards you, you turn around and walk the other way. The only actor I felt just didn't land his performance was Forest Whitaker. He is Chief Barns a good cop with a raspy ass voice. The voice is what threw me off, if he is trying to act like a badass by making his voice all raspy then he fails. It came off as someone trying to do their best Batman voice.
The Director of this film is new to directing this is his second film he has ever made. Scott Cooper (no relation to Bradley Cooper) has made an amazing film here. I am so excited to see him become a huge thriller director like Nolan and Scorsese. This guy takes a main character that everyone can relate to and put him in these situations that you end up feeling sorry and hoping that he can overcome these obstacles. He also has an antagonist that you loath so much that you just want to see them fall so badly.
In the end it saddens me that this movie is going to be overlooked by the general audience with all the competition out right now. Movie buffs if you haven't seen this movie please go see it. This movie is well worth the price of admission, this is dark, thrilling and will have twist that no one sees coming. I give this a 4.5 out of 5 because it isn't a perfect movie and drags just a touch in the beginning. Other than that this is a must see in theaters so please go see this film. So that's it everyone if you have seen this film I'd love to talk about it in our forums page.