Director and co-writer Scott Cooper has made what could have been a really good, provocative revenge thriller; at least, that’s what the preview promised.  Sadly, the result is a slow, muddled thriller without any thrills.

Two brothers (Christian Bale, Casey Affleck) lead unassuming lives in steel-town Pennsylvania.  Bale likes his life, his girlfriend (Zoe Saldana), and is a calming influence on his younger brother Affleck, who has returned from Iraq restless and troubled.  Then fate intervenes and they both experience serious problems.  When one disappears the other dedicates himself to finding out what happened.

Cooper wants to create a character movie, and he succeeds.  Christian Bale ably creates a personable, responsible character whom anyone should be happy to call a brother.  Affleck may be even better as a brooding loner, always in motion and ready to mix it up.  In smaller roles, Sam Shepard, Willem Dafoe and Forest Whitaker make strong impressions.  Woody Harrelson has a flamboyant role as the piece’s villain, a violent hick from New Jersey with bad teeth and a nasty temper.  Only Zoe Saldana has almost nothing to do.

The characters are so well grounded that I actually enjoyed much of the movie, even while it descended into muddled melodrama and repeatedly failed to sustain any level of suspense.  It’s as if Cooper decided to make a revenge movie without any of the conventional trappings of suspense thrillers; the result is a movie that provides few highs or lows — it’s all very monotone.  It also provides no time references for some of the important plot points, and refutes common sense in key scenes.

I am also troubled by Cooper’s casual indictment of a local New Jersey Indian tribe as “inbreds” who live in trailers, are all involved in criminal enterprise and who care little for the lives of others.  Woody Harrelson’s character comes from this group, uses a common name, and is now a thoroughly reprehensible representative of these people to the world.  There is a thin line between creating a fictional villain from a real group of people and continually lambasting an isolated, perhaps misunderstood culture; I think Cooper errs on the side of persecution.

There is much of merit in Out of the Furnace, yet it is a very flawed film.  A few key moments are so unclear — including a final shot that raises all kinds of questions — that one wonders if one has fully understood what has just happened.  This lack of clarity may be intended as ambiguousness, but it really comes down to a skilled filmmaker stubbornly being foolish.  Ultimately a lot of good work here has gone to waste.  ☆ ☆.  31 December 2013.