Out Of The Furnace (2013): Review

This weekend I went and the movie Out of the Furnace and although there was nothing terribly horrible about it, all I can really say is that it was mediocre.  Going into this movie is was expecting it be an thriller type movie, with the previous focusing on Christian Bale going to find out what happened to his brother but for me it was slow paced, focusing on emoting from the actors and week in story.  I kept waiting for something compelling to happened but it just didn't.
There was a lot of attempt at putting story into this movie and now that I think about it there weren't that many characters to mull up the works and prevent from really going into the character, which was slightly hinted at.  You have Christian Bale as Russell Baze who has been working a hard life in his steel mill town and being the big brother to Rodney Baze, played by Casey Afflick, who has been participating in alley fights to make money for his gambling habit.  Rodney decides he want to fight up in the hill country and persuades local bookey John Petty, played by William Dafoe, to set up a fight with Harlan DeGroat, played by Woody Harrelson, who is a violent man who even Petty is scared of.  Also in the mix are Russell's ex Lena, played by Zoe Saladana, and her new man police Chief Westley Barnes, played by Forrest Whitaker. 
I was disappointed by how un-engaging this movie is because of the great caliber of actors in it.  Many of the main characters are people who I tend to like and find engaging to watch even in movie that are poor but that were not able to do much with this boring movie.  I didn't really care about any of the characters and they all seemed to keep making just stupid decisions when there was peril written on the wall.  Maybe it could have been better if the story wasn't so transparent and the audience could have felt some anticipation or wonder what was going to happen.  Also at the end the movie just ended.
There was nothing truly horrible about this movie and for people who tend to like movies that are heavy of the melancholy and overtly focused on the long emoting scenes of the actors will like this movie as that was it is, for me I like movie that have some excitement, emotional connection to the story or one of the characters, or just plane fun.  This was none of them. 

My Rating: 1