OUT OF THE FURNACE and into the nightmare flip side of the American Dream, via a 2013 fusing of family drama and crime thriller that takes a blowtorch to the nostalgic fantasy that’s constantly taunted at us by those who’ve hijacked it. Scott Cooper directed, co-writing the screenplay with Brad Ingelsby. The script first written by Ingelsby was called “The Low Dwellers”. By the time Cooper had the cast picked and a platoon of producers collected the $22,000,000 budget, a new and better title was borrowed from a 1941 novel, one set in the same region, dealing with tough conditions in an earlier era. *

“Working for a living? I gave my life for this country and what’s it done for me? Huh? What’s it done for me?”

Braddock, Pennsylvania, the mid-2000s. Whatever the ‘good times’ were, deindustrialization stole them from steel mill towns, and took a chunk of blue collar hope in the bargain. Bravehearted straight-shooter ‘Russell Baze’ (Christian Bale) takes hits from all sides. A split second of distraction while driving (slightly intoxicated) results in a fatal collision and five years of jail for vehicular manslaughter. That costs not just time and guilt but lost love: his girlfriend ‘Lena’ (‘Zoë Saldana) moves on. His father was terminally ill and younger brother ‘Rodney’ (Casey Affleck) is haunted by multiple tours in the Iraq fiasco. Rodney owes money to local fixer ‘John Petty’ (Willem Dafoe), who in turn is in debt to vicious redneck drug dealer ‘Harlan De Groat’, who runs a depraved crew in the recesses of the Ramapo Mountains in New Jersey. Russell mans up to stand up, but there is a point where that single straw is simply one too many.

Like too many superior crime-related dramas in recent years, this searing, so-real-it-hurts shard of dark red Americana drew critical applause but lackluster attendance; 126th domestically, the global take a punishing $15,661,000.  Shot in Pennsylvania (much in Braddock) and West Virginia, with Masanobu Takayanogi (The Grey, Silver Linings Playbook) as cinematographer. The direction by Cooper (Crazy Heart, Black Mass, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere) is excellent; he and scenarist Ingelsby show a keen grasp of the beat-down working class and the lowlife burnouts who make their already financially potholed road more perilous to travel. They don’t rely on quirked-up pseudo-Quentin characters, over-elaborate shootouts that belong in video games and lazy swings of the f-crutch for every third word. The acting ensemble couldn’t be better, with Bale’s beleaguered protagonist and Harrelson’s bad-to-the-atom De Groat the standouts, each offering virtual master classes in focus, utterly convincing.

“Inbred mountain folk from Jersey. Church ain’t over until the snakes are back in the bag, if you know what I mean?”

This was one of those producer-jammed properties, with 23 credited at one level or another, including Leonardo DiCaprio and Ridley Scott. Thankfully, all those hands didn’t mess up the brew, which simmers and boils for 116 minutes. With Forest Whitaker, Sam Shepard, Tom Bower, Dendrie Taylor and Boyd Holbrook.

* Time & place—Thomas Bell’s 424-page novel that fed the title and shared the locale concerned three generations of an immigrant family and their struggle to adapt and persevere from the 1880’s up into WW2. Steel mills figure.