* A big thank you to the handsome and talented Brian Panowich for the suggestion *
My favorite memories with my father are of watching action/suspense together in the basement of our house. He introduced my young and feeble mind to the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mel Gibson, Ray Liotta and, of course, the inimitable Sylvester Stallone. My dad taught me that movies featuring angry dudes shooting at one another can be film everywhere and that I should not judge a movie by its poster or its piss poor cast, because you never know where you can find a diamond. I have found a new one unexpectedly on Netflix, thanks to a friend suggestion. It's titled Out of the Furnace and it's probably one of the most ambitious genre movie I've ever had the privilege to watch.
Rodney Baze (Casey Affleck) is a troubled war veteran looking to cash in on the American Dream in any way he can: horse races, underground fights, you name it. His older brother Russell Baze (Christian Bale) is looking out for him the best he can while juggling a full-time job his girlfriend's (the gorgeous Zoë Saldana) urges for motherhood. Both of their lives change though when Russell is arrested and condemned after a fatal car accident. He was barely over the alcohol limit, but he feels to guilty he doesn't even fight the sentence. When Russell is finally released, he lost everything except a brother who's in deep with a local shylock (Willem Dafoe) and growing desperate to settle his debt.
Out of the Furnace is a very literary movie in ways few movies are. It's an original screenplay, but it is paced like a short novel: lots of slow scenes, vivid visual details that reveal character, dialogue that betrayed loaded backstory etc. For example, Zoë Saldana's new boyfriend (played by the awesome Forest Whitaker) is only appearing once without his police uniform, but he's wearing a large, ugly and battered leather jacket and silly high pants, hinting he's a reformed old bachelor. There's another beautiful scene where Casey Affleck explodes with rage without every touching his brother, hinting at all the love hidden under his tortured mind. Out of the Furnace addresses its viewers as intelligent beings and you know how that turns me on, don't you?
Composed? Yes. Artificial? Sure. Badass? 100%
I usually am suspicious of every all-star movie cast, yet I'll admit Out of the Furnace makes it work beautifully. The talent associated with this movie is impressive, but the character cast is rather intimate and everybody has clear, well-defined parts. The only dissonant note maybe was Woody Harrelson playing the cartoonishly evil mountain tweaker. I don't have any life experience with meth people, but Harrelson's part is the embodiment of evil. His character squeezes the life out of everything he sees and touches pretty much for the hell of it and I haven't found any other motivation to him that just the pleasure to do that. I wouldn't have singled him out if the movie wasn't so unrepentantly great otherwise. It makes him stick out like a hernia, but fortunately he doesn't take all that much screen time.
Don't ask me to explain why Out of the Furnace lost 11 millions in theaters and only scores 53% on Rotten Tomatoes. This is why we can't have nice things. Movies are a big budget business and they need to all be formatted in the same way in other to make their money and gain widespread approval. Out of the Furnace is different, daring and contrary to what some critics said: it's not dark and gritty for the sake of being dark and gritty. It's the family tragedy of two brothers being torn apart by a world without future for them. Out of the Furnace is a bright and shining diamond at the bottom of the coal mine that is contemporary cinema. If you can't find a place in your heart for this daring and fuel-efficient little movie, the dark side of hollow big budget entertainment might have gotten to you.