The film stars Christian Bale, Woody Harrelson, Casey Affleck, Forest Whitaker, Willem Dafoe, Zoë Saldana, and Sam Shepard, the film follows a Pennsylvania steel mill worker searching for his missing Iraq War veteran brother, who disappeared after engaging in a bare knuckle fighting match arranged by an indebted bar owner and a ruthless New Jersey drug dealer.

The film received mixed to positive reviews from critics, and the performances of the cast earned widespread praise.

Steel mill worker Russell Baze lives with his brother, Rodney, a four-tour Iraq war veteran, in North Braddock, Pennsylvania.

Rodney reveals the money he bet with - and lost - was lent by John Petty, who owns a bar and runs several illegal games.

While Russell is in prison, his ailing father dies and his girlfriend Lena leaves him for police chief Wesley Barnes.

[2] The film was produced by Relativity Media, Appian Way Productions, Red Granite Pictures, and Scott Free Productions, with Jeff Waxman, Tucker Tooley, Brooklyn Weaver, Riza Aziz, Joey McFarland, Joe Gatta, Danny Dimbort, and Christian Mercuri serving as executive producers.

[3] Director Scott Cooper read an article about Braddock, Pennsylvania, a declining steel industry town outside Pittsburgh, and the efforts to revitalize it, led by mayor John Fetterman.

[4] Cooper developed the story from The Low Dweller, a spec script written by Brad Ingelsby that had actor Leonardo DiCaprio and director Ridley Scott attached.

[6][7] The studio offered the script to Cooper, which he rewrote, drawing on his experience of growing up in Appalachia and losing a sibling at a young age.

[4] Christian Bale wore a tattoo of Braddock's ZIP code, 15104, on his neck as an homage to the town's then-mayor (now US Senator) John Fetterman, who has the same design on his arm.

Out of the Furnace was the only new film to receive a wide release in the U.S. on December 6, 2013, and earned an estimated $1.8 million on its opening day.

"[25] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 63 out of 100 based on 40 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

[31] Nine members of the group, eight of whom have the surname DeGroat, the same as the lead character, filed suit against the makers and other involved parties, claiming that Out of the Furnace portrays a gang of "inbreds" living in the Ramapo Mountains who are "lawless, drug-addicted, impoverished and violent.

"[32] The lawsuit asserts that "The Defendants, and each of them, knew or should have known that their actions would place Plaintiffs, and/or any person so situated in a false light."

The suit continues, "The connection between the ethnic slur of 'Jackson Whites', with the location of the Ramapo Mountains of New Jersey', with a Bergen County Police patrol car, with the surnames 'DeGroat' and 'Van Dunk', is too specific to the Ramapough plaintiffs to be chance, coincidence or happenstance, and implies an element of knowledge on the part of the Defendants, or some of them.

"[33] On May 16, 2014, U.S. District Court Judge William Walls, sitting in Newark, New Jersey, dismissed the lawsuit, saying that the film did not refer directly to any of the plaintiffs.