A few weeks ago Christian Bale was
nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for "American Hustle". The nomination
was richly deserved in a very good year for actors yet after seeing
"Out of the Furnace" I can't help thinking the nomination should have
been for this movie since this is the best performance Bale has given to
date. He's Russell Baze, a steel-worker in an economically impoverished
American small-town and he's a thoroughly decent human being. Casey
Affleck is his younger brother, Rodney, a somewhat disturbed Iraq
veteran with a gambling habit who takes up bare-knuckle boxing in an
attempt to pay off his debts. Things go seriously wrong for the brothers
when Rodney falls foul of Woody Harrelson's truly scary
redneck drug-dealer.
This terrific movie is something like a
cross between "The Deer Hunter" minus the Vietnam scenes, (there's even a
deer hunt in this one, too) and "Hard Times", (not to be confused with
the Christian Bale movie"Harsh Times" but the Charles Bronson movie
about bare-knuckle boxing that came out in 1975). It's a film that takes
its time; we get to know the characters gradually and it's not just
Bale and Affleck and Harrelson who are brilliant here. Willem Dafoe,
Forrest Whittaker, Sam Shepard and Tom Bower are all totally comfortable
in their roles. This is a slow burner of a movie and it's brilliantly
directed by Scott Cooper and superbly photographed by Masanobu
Takayangi. It's also a powerful and depressing picture of the current
state of the American economy where the good guys can no longer hold it
together and where the bad guys always seem to have the upper hand.
A few weeks ago Christian Bale was
nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for "American Hustle". The nomination
was richly deserved in a very good year for actors yet after seeing
"Out of the Furnace" I can't help thinking the nomination should have
been for this movie since this is the best performance Bale has given to
date. He's Russell Baze, a steel-worker in an economically impoverished
American small-town and he's a thoroughly decent human being. Casey
Affleck is his younger brother, Rodney, a somewhat disturbed Iraq
veteran with a gambling habit who takes up bare-knuckle boxing in an
attempt to pay off his debts. Things go seriously wrong for the brothers
when Rodney falls foul of Woody Harrelson's truly scary
redneck drug-dealer.
This terrific movie is something like a
cross between "The Deer Hunter" minus the Vietnam scenes, (there's even a
deer hunt in this one, too) and "Hard Times", (not to be confused with
the Christian Bale movie"Harsh Times" but the Charles Bronson movie
about bare-knuckle boxing that came out in 1975). It's a film that takes
its time; we get to know the characters gradually and it's not just
Bale and Affleck and Harrelson who are brilliant here. Willem Dafoe,
Forrest Whittaker, Sam Shepard and Tom Bower are all totally comfortable
in their roles. This is a slow burner of a movie and it's brilliantly
directed by Scott Cooper and superbly photographed by Masanobu
Takayangi. It's also a powerful and depressing picture of the current
state of the American economy where the good guys can no longer hold it
together and where the bad guys always seem to have the upper hand.
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