GUENOT PHILIPPE OK won't make it too long; just to say that some accents here remind me Michael Cimino's masterpiece: Pittsburgh vicinity, steel factories, deep America, war veterans, unemployed people, darkness, and a deer hunter scene. Besides, that's for me a true film noir.

rusoviet ....his personal concern for the sad abandoned 'Rodney' (Casey Affleck) is both authentic and truly courageous in terms of dealing with the demons who 'squat' inside Harlan (Woody Harrelson's) DeGroat.This is not a film for the squeamish. It's not so much that the violence is 'over the top' rather it is the 'spirit' and I am insistent on calling it such, the 'spirit' that hovers over the abandoned souls that live scattered over this deeply forested region of NW New Jersey and NE PA. Evil only needs a willing soul with which to incubate and begin to entangle said soul's every thought and action to the point where an entire region is slowly but steadily corrupted and then denies the level of depravity these poor damned individuals have chosen to sink to. Well done but for me - DaFoe was the true character who understood what was about to descend and, to his harm, chose to 'stand in the gap' against evil - come Lord Jesus!

Mihai Toma Russell, an average guy, working at a steel mill in a remote village, gets arrested for causing an accident. In the meantime, his girlfriend dumps him and his brother, Rodney, gets involved in some nasty fights, not willing to work like a normal person.As you would expect, Rodney's "business" doesn't go as it was hoped, he gets involved with the wrong guy and gets murdered. As the police must follow procedure, thus taking a very long and agonizing time, Russell decides he must do something about it. But don't imagine here that he will go and beat the bad guy up, or shoot him, or something...nooo, he wastes his time waiting for the police until the movie is close to the end, makes a phone call, lures him in his village, takes revenge and the end. As simple as that. What a movie! It has two hours, one wasted on boring and mundane events, half of the other brings some drama, but not too much because it might hurt somebody, while the last part tries to make up for the lack of interest and excitement the movie inspired until that point by providing the much lusted revenge.To say this movie was a waste of time would simply be a compliment for it. Besides the fact that is as boring as it can be, it also features two big stupid and disappointing sequences, on which the movie bases, which make you scratch your head, to say the least. The only positive aspect about this movie is, as usual, the actors, who do their part very well. If it wasn't for them, I would have closed the TV after at most half an hour.

NateWatchesCoolMovies While not quite in the pantheon of powerhouse that the filmmakers intended it to be, Scott Cooper's Out Of The Furnace is still a bleak, devastating picture. This is a film about endings, and not resolute, satisfactory ones either. Set in a borderline derelict mining town somewhere in the rust belt, industry has come to a grinding halt, giving way to the inevitable rise of rural crime, spreading like a cancer across land that once flourished and prospered. Every character in the film meets their bitter end somehow, and what's fascinating is that earlier in life they all could have been more whole, and come from some other, brighter genre film, but the lives they've led set them on the same course as their county, and one by one we see them reach the last bend in the road, and the light in their life unceremoniously flicker out, leaving a cold shell. If I'm making this sound depressing, I'm doing my job well. This is a soul crushing film, with no light at either end of the tunnel and all glimmers of hope already extinguished before the opening titles even show up, so just make sure you have Finding Nemo or Wallace & Gromit queued up next in line if you give it a go. Opening with a prologue that leaves a bad taste in your mouth, you know right off the bat what you're in for, as we're introduced to Woody Harrelson's Harlan Groat, an absolute monster who runs everything from underground fight clubs to an intricate web of meth trade in the region. Groat is at odds with steelworker Russell Baze (An implosive Christian Bale), a hard man with anger issues just looking for an excuse to get fired up. Russell's brother Rodney (Casey Affleck in the film's best work) is a broken Iraqi war vet who got on the wrong side of Groat's gang, and has since disappeared. Since the law won't venture into the near mythic backwood hills where Groat skulks, Baze goes vigilante, waging personal war and raging against a light that has long since gone dead. This is a big cast we're looking at here, and some of the subplots either distract from the main show or just seem like overkill, like Zoe Zaldana as Russell's ex who has since shacked up with the local Sheriff (Forest Whitaker), or an underused Sam Shepherd as his uncle Red. Willem Dafoe has a nice bit as a seedy but sympathetic local gangster though, it's always nice to see him, as well as Tom Bower as the salt of the earth bartender. It's all about Woody and the danger he brings, he's terrifying in the most mundane of exchanges, and lethal when he gets worked up. The feeling of economic decay follows him like a noxious cloud, his brittle ruthlessness a mascot for the hard times that many a town in the US has fallen on in recent years. One need only look at the poster to see the obvious and intentional shades of Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter, and though the film wears its influences on its heavy flannel sleeve, it finds its own dark, despairing poetry, and leaves you gutted in the final, anticlimactic frame.