Out of the Furnace - a heavy hitting cast in a tough and unrelenting film

A GRITTY, defiantly downbeat affair set in a struggling Pennsylvania steel town where good jobs are hard to come by, and bad luck is easily found.

Christian Bale in Out of the Furnace.

OUT OF THE FURNACE [MA15+]

Rating: 3 stars

Director: Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart)

Starring: Christian Bale, Casey Affleck, Zoe Saldana, Woody Harrelson

Take the heat and take a hit, or take a hike

A GRITTY, defiantly downbeat affair set in a struggling Pennsylvania steel town where good jobs are hard to come by, and bad luck is easily found.

Christian Bale plays Russell, an ex-con trying to turn his life around. Casey Affleck is Rodney, his war-veteran younger brother who won’t try at all.

A recent stretch in jail might have lost Russell a girlfriend (Zoe Saldana) and any reason to go on, but he won’t back down without a fight. As for Rodney, all he can do now is fight. He’s scraping together a living as an up-and-comer on the undercards of an illegal bareknuckle boxing circuit.

Russell knows it’s just a matter of time before Rodney will be down and out for the count. Particularly considering the bouts are inevitably rigged by a psychotic meth-huffing hillbilly by the name of DeGroat (Woody Harrelson).

This is tough, unrelenting and uncompromising stuff, conjuring a doomed atmosphere with honourable parallels to the 1978 classic The Deer Hunter.

A heavy-hitting cast (which also includes Willem Dafoe and Forest Whitaker) have thrown themselves into this pit of despair with true commitment.

Whether you will feel like taking the jump as well is another matter entirely.