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Rating: An actor turned director, Scott Cooper made his debut with "Crazy Heart" (2009), with which he immediately managed to gain a certain notoriety, thanks to its good recognition at the Academy Awards in 2010. Then came "Out Of The Furnace" (2013), a work that had a complicated gestation with several casting changes. Cooper himself found himself directing the film without being the primary executor, as the project was initially entrusted to a near-debutante like the Englishman Rupert Sanders.
Arriving in Italy with a title that is again less profound than the original, the film tells the story of the Blaze brothers: Russell (Christian Bale), a factory worker, and Rodney (Casey Affleck), a soldier returning from various missions in Iraq. The story (also penned by Cooper himself) is set in a poor and degraded environment, where one cannot escape the misery of the American "suburb."
Cooper is no novice, he knows how to do his job well, how to give a visual touch to his films: unfortunately, however, his second feature is a film excessively lacking in personality and really too stuffed with clichés. The relationship between the calm brother trying to help the self-destructive one is a writing device seen too many times to be truly engaging, as are the father's illness and the accident that lands Russell in jail, which are just two heavy stones of drama that do not help define the characters' personalities. They arrive suddenly, emphasizing the adverse fate of the Blaze brothers but seem almost disconnected episodes from the rest of the screenplay. Wasted screentime.
It is clear from the start that Cooper does not just want to tell his story but also to show the remnants of the economic crisis that hit the States. His goal lingers on the sidelines compared to the rest, but a hint to Obama here, the flaunted poverty there, fail to create a real critical strength. Even in this case, Cooper and the screenplay show they have confused ideas. The plot never manages to elevate the level to something else, and the film remains a simple revenge movie like many others. Moreover, the main character played by Bale is inconsistent, transforming from a morally upright man into a killing machine in the finale, which is totally breaking with the character outlined up to that point. But already the non-reaction to the news of his brother's death was a negative point on the protagonist's writing.
Cooper's symbolism is fairly shallow and ends in itself (Affleck as a sacrificial lamb in the deer skinning scene), and many other developments are predictable and again already seen and reviewed (Bale's girlfriend betrayal). As if Cooper sought more the "dramatic atmosphere" than the real coherence of the script. Thus one of the few characters that work is the "villain" DeGroat (Woody Harrelson), crazy, erratic, alcoholic, and unscrupulous. Nothing else is expected of him. Perhaps predictable because unilateral, but consistent as the others are not.
"Out of the Furnace" is a mix of drama and thriller with contours seen dozens and dozens of times before. It's not a piece entirely to discard, because Cooper builds a film that remains solid directorially and with photography suited to highlight the location's misery. His is a narrative that wants to blend the rebellious soul of Dominik's "Killing Them Softly" and that resumes the narrative structure of the splendid "The Indian Runner" by Sean Penn. But his view is of "recycling", and the film ends up being a revenge movie with predictable turns, with an extraordinary cast that cannot hold up a screenplay with too many problems.
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