Out of the Furnace – 7.5

Another exercise in style from producer Ridley Scott – not as extreme as The Counselor, but in the same vein. Our hero, played by Christian Bale, was the personification of Good: we didn’t see him reading to blind children in his spare time only because, between working two shifts in the steel mill, tending his dying father, covering the debts of his irresponsible brother and paying his debt to society for a crime that wasn’t really his fault, he had no spare time. His success at knocking off the personification of Bad was thoroughly incredible, but we didn’t much mind because Woody Harrelson’s portrayal of the villain was so much fun and the blue-collar-and-below atmosphere of the belching steel mill town and Deliverance-quality backwoods New Jersey was so well done. The movie was like a painting – a Grosz, an Ensor, a van Gogh: not the world as it exists, but an artistic vision.