Christian Bale plays Russell Baze, a steel mill worker in the Appalachian Rust Belt, in Out of the Furnace, a crime drama that tries to build a thriller around two brothers and fails to hold its shape. The film, directed by Scott Cooper, leans on Bale’s physical presence and a cast full of character actors, but its plot keeps splitting apart into three separate stories that never quite come back together.
Trailer, via American Film Institute.
Russell Baze’s Fall
Russell Baze works at a steel mill in North Braddock, Pennsylvania, alongside his brother Rodney, an Iraq War veteran. Their lives fall apart when Russell, driving drunk, hits a car and kills its occupants, landing in prison for vehicular manslaughter. While he is locked up, his girlfriend Lena leaves him for the town’s police chief, Wesley Barnes. The film spends its first hour building this setup, and it works best when it stays grounded in the brothers’ shared history and the slow decay of their neighborhood.
Rodney’s Descent
Rodney disappears after taking part in a bare-knuckle fight arranged by John Petty, a bar owner who runs illegal games. When Russell finds him, he learns Rodney took a dive in the fight to repay his debt. That decision sets off the film’s central conflict: Rodney’s refusal to return to normal life, even as his brother pushes him toward the mill. The tension between the two brothers is the movie’s strongest thread, but the script keeps pulling away from it to chase the violence that surrounds Rodney.
DeGroat and the Ramapo Mountains
The film’s final stretch introduces Harlan DeGroat, a ruthless drug dealer from rural New Jersey, who organizes a larger fight for Rodney. The climax moves the action to the Ramapo Mountains, where Rodney is told to lose the fight deliberately. Instead, he nearly knocks out his opponent before taking the dive. The sequence is meant to show Rodney’s strength and his refusal to bend, but the film’s momentum stalls once the brothers stop sharing the screen.
A Cast That Carries More Than the Story
The performances carry more weight than the script can support. Bale anchors the film with a physical performance that matches the director’s grim tone. Casey Affleck earns his nomination for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture at the 18th Satellite Awards as Rodney, a man whose anger and fear drive him toward ever more dangerous choices. Woody Harrelson, Willem Dafoe, and Sam Shepard round out the supporting cast, each bringing their own weight to the film’s dark corners.
Forest Whitaker plays Chief Wesley Barnes, the man who takes Lena away from Russell. Zoe Saldaña plays Lena herself, and the film’s handling of their relationship is one of its weaker points, a subplot about a baby and a broken promise that never feels fully worked through. Boyd Holbrook appears as a tattooed man, and Gordon Michaels plays a Bergen County officer, both small roles in a film that struggles to give its smaller parts room to breathe.
What Works and What Doesn’t
The film’s strengths are its sense of place and its cast. The Rust Belt setting feels lived-in, and the director’s eye for decayed industrial landscapes gives the story a visual anchor. The weaknesses are structural: the plot splits into three threads — Russell in prison, Rodney in the ring, and the town’s political corruption — and none of them gets enough time to land. The film announces itself as a story about family and violence, then spends its final act chasing spectacle instead of character.
The film’s tagline, “Sometimes your battles choose you,” captures what the movie tries to do: show men caught between forces they cannot control. It mostly succeeds with Bale and Affleck, less so with the plot that holds them together.
By the Numbers
- Title: Out of the Furnace
- Director: Scott Cooper
- Writer: Brad Ingelsby, Scott Cooper
- Release date: December 6, 2013
- Runtime: 116 minutes
- Budget: $22 million
- Box office: $15.7 million
- Satellite Award nomination: Casey Affleck, Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture
- Saturn Award nomination: Film, Best Independent Film
Out of the Furnace is a film with a strong cast and a weak plot. Bale and Affleck give it everything it needs, but the script keeps losing focus. The film’s failure is not one of execution — the direction is steady, the performances are committed — but of ambition. It wants to be a gritty crime drama about family and fate, and it keeps drifting into a more conventional thriller about violence and revenge. The result is a film that is often absorbing and occasionally gripping, but rarely coherent.
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