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13 Years Later, Christian Bale’s Forgotten All-Star Crime Thriller Deserves Your Attention

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Christian Bale has long been a powerhouse in entertainment, from his unnerving role as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho to the Caped Crusader himself in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy. Batman hung up his cowl in 2012 after The Dark Knight Rises, but that wasn’t the end for Bale. Pretty soon after, the performer delivered a gripping performance in a forgotten thriller that deserves a second chance.

Out of the Furnace is a character-driven crime thriller with an all-star cast difficult to beat. Bale stars in the drama as Russell Baze, a steelworker in the rural part of Pennsylvania that may be familiar to Mare of Easttown fans. Russell is a working-class man who struggles to support his veteran brother, Rodney (Casey Affleck), after he becomes indebted to a local bookie. This starts a cataclysm of events that culminates in a violent revenge plot where there are no winners.

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‘Out of the Furnace’ Is Elevated By an All-Star Cast

Out of the Furnace is a haunting story that, in the hands of the impressive ensemble cast, is truly great. Christian Bale carries the worries of his character Russell with grace, while Casey Affleck, as the troubled brother Rodney, is hard to look away from. The Baze brothers, however, are just a small part of the captivating characters. Woody Harrelson steals the show as Harlan DeGroat, the vicious antagonist of the story.































































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Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz
Which Action Hero Would Be
Your Perfect Partner?

Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt

Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.

🎖️Rambo

🍸James Bond

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🏺Indiana Jones

🔧John McClane

🎭Ethan Hunt

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01

You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner?
The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.





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02

You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel?
How you get there is half the mission.





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03

You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do?
This is when you find out what someone is really made of.





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04

The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest?
Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.





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05

How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission?
Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.





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06

Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them?
The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.





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07

Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do?
Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.





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08

What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace?
A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.





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09

Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with?
No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.





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10

It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now?
The last question is the most honest one.





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Your Partner Has Been Assigned
Your Perfect Partner Is…

Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.

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Rambo

Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.

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James Bond

Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.

Indiana Jones

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Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.

John McClane

Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.

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Ethan Hunt

Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.

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Desperate for money and unable to function at a 9-to-5 job, Rodney enters the world of underground fighting, further digging himself in deeper with a brutal drug dealer from New Jersey. Harrelson disappears completely into the role, becoming a terrifying villain who starts the story by abusing a woman and only gets worse from there. He is truly unredemptive, which is the linchpin of the rest of the narrative.

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Russell dives headlong into vengeance after Harlan destroys his family, which may resonate with fans of Batman. Bale brings the same savage energy he had in his work in The Dark Knight trilogy in an even more realistic fashion. Russell’s desperation and grief are palpable, as are the stakes of the world. This small town is a place where not many people are allowed to get ahead. Rodney has to resort to back-alley fighting to make a living, while Russell’s own life falls apart because of a cruel twist of fate.

These characters have to subsist on nothing and still try to scrape by. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the movie was originally a spec script by Brad Ingelsby, now known for his many vivid characters based in Delaware County. Ingelsby created Mare of Easttown and Task, both crime thrillers that deal with the specificities of what it is to live in that location. Out of the Furnace is equally specific, just on a shorter timeline.

The grim drama was a perfect first project after Bale’s tenure as Gotham’s protector. His range is evident in this story as Russell commits to some of the worst choices anyone could make. A tragic character portrait, it is a surprise that the star-studded film didn’t get more play the first time around. Now fans can see it to their heart’s content, streaming on Prime Video.


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Release Date

December 6, 2013

Runtime
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116minutes

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