Out of the Furnace (2013)

A solid, well-acted tale about how the bad steps in when jobs fall away in the Rust Belt.

Yes, the working class is bearing the brunt of an inequitable economic system, and yes, the treatment of our returning soldiers from the last decade of war has been disgraceful, but the film has nothing of substance say about any of this.

Bale and Affleck have an easy relationship and chemistry that makes them seem like real brothers, with Bale yet again proving he is the master at conveying a monologue's worth of emotion in a single brooding look.

What [Bale is] doing in Out of the Furnace is the essence of performance. It is bare. It is haunted. It is real

Loyalty and consequence collide in the "Crazy Heart" director's sophomore feature...but while those themes eventually result in payoffs that are noticeably muted and confused, the film is luckily powered by a powerful trio of performances at its core...

A starkly powerful drama that in some ways feels like an Iraq-era bookend to The Deer Hunter.

Although Out Of The Furnace is done utterly by the book, it also works by the book, delivering a tough, cathartic story straight, no chaser.

Out of the Furnace is one of the year's best-acted and gutsiest films, gutsy because it dares to stick to its figurative guns until the bitter end.