Out of the Furnace is mostly set in Braddock, Pennsylvania, but deals so heavily with hillbillies—they're casually referred to as "inbreds," and they lie around in drug stupors when they aren't hollering at bare-knuckled fights—that it might as well share geography with Deliverance. Russell (Christian Bale) works at Braddock's doomed steel mill and tries to keep his little brother, troubled Iraq vet Rodney (Casey Affleck), out of trouble. So when Rodney heads to Appalachia to try his hand in the brutal backwoods fights rigged by Harlan DeGroat—an immaculately named hillbilly drug lord played by Woody Harrelson—it isn't long until Russell heads into the woods too. Crazy Heart director Scott Cooper takes his time telling Russell's dour, angry story, and the result is a slow burn that lights up with moments of bloody violence and jarring intensity. by Erik Henriksen