The small town, blue-collar workers in Scott Cooper’s “Out of the Furnace” are disappearing both from America and from the silver screen. They deserve better than what they get here, a gritty realism riddled with clichéd storytelling conventions.
Cooper covers a lot of that up with a great cast that turns in predictably solid, if not dazzling, performances. The explosiveness of Christian Bale, Woody Harrelson, and Casey Affleck in one movie alone is a sight to see no matter what. But it should be a powder keg, not a few sparks flying.
The film should receive some credit for being one of few to tackle the home-front experiences of Iraq War veterans like Affleck’s Rodney Baze. He’s completely volatile, a pugnacious time bomb who will detonate if he cannot pulverize someone with his fists. But everyone else in the Pennsylvania Rust Belt town in “Out of the Furnace” who tries to either defuse him or encourage him just fails to light up the screen in any way, shape, or form.
For a film whose title refers to an object capable of generating high temperatures, “Out of the Furnace” packs remarkably little heat. C / 
Marshall and the Movies 
I knew this film had the potential to be so, so much better when the Zoe Saldana character informs Christian Bale she’s pregnant with somebody else’s baby.
His reaction, oh boy. What a great actor and such a potent moment in a movie that could’ve been.