Fury (2014)

Fury (R)

"Ideals are peaceful, History is violent"

A ragtag tank crew in the waning years of the European WWII campaign are making the final push into Germany.  It's 1945, but the tank finds itself with a new, unwilling recruit.  Will they gel as a unit, or will the new blood unwittingly lead to their being "Spam in a Can" in this new war film written and directed by David Ayers (whose biggest claim to fame will still be writing Training Day 2001).

Brad Pitt leads the mostly war-movie-cliche ridden group (Redneck Southerner, Fiery Latino, Piously Religious, Super Green new Guy), while somehow keeping his own Sarge character out of the gutter.  He is a calm restrained man who is instantly enraged to murderous "fury" at the sight of enemy SS, cares deeply for his own men whom he physically abuses and feeds day by day and call his tank both home and the best job he ever had.  The rest of the cast has Shia LaBeuf using his new found wackiness to fuel his zealotry (and succeeds well), Michael Pena and John Bernthal as the crew vets.  but its Logan Lerman (Percy Jackson) as Norman who gets the sub-ripest part as the new guy who soul will soon be stained by warfare.  Hesitation and mercy paint his early days in the can, to which his crew mates react without compassion.  He cannot understand their willingness for cold blooded killing, but then he hasn't lived through their months of blood and guts, from Africa to France and now into enemy Deutschland, barely surviving together as a rough and tumble family.  This is all told through overt actions or reminisces during a calm before the storm, well nuanced and scripted.  The action too is a tense, enjoyable affair reminiscent of Das Boot, showing the tank's mechanized machinations from inside out.  And yet, despite the thrilling Shermans vs Panzer battle or a couple other nice moments, Fury just can't stay on it's tracks long enough to say or show much of anything important.

First the cinematography is smoky and dull (why go through the effort of smoke strategy in the field of combat when nearly EVERY shot has fog of war and smokepots to create atmosphere?), everything is just dirt and cold steel.  When there is a quiet moment of soldiers both forcing themselves onto the civilians and simultaneously being respectful to them, at least the lens has a chance to have a clear line of sight (the visibility in almost every shot is murky as a N64 FPS).  It just adds nothing and detracts more.  That is doubly true of the soundtrack, a over dramatized, over choir filled affair.  The music often is at odds with the scenes, often overrides any subtle emotions the cast was trying to portray, and just plain distracts so often this reviewer was wishing it just wasn't there.  The sound design is underwhelming, the realism of living in a steel chambered gunpowder filled deathtrap has almost no audible weight (the tanks in Saving Private Ryan, for instance, were squealing frightening monsters that could be heard for miles).  In this regard Fury ist nicht Das Boot, for where are the diesel fumes, the choking smoke, the roaring engines and cramped living conditions?  Even the CGI bullet tracers just have a slightly off look to them.

Brad Pitt  gives a great performance of an man whose been effected by violence, not by going into shock but by getting angry and perpetrating the cycle.  Sure it fits neatly into Pitt's motif of "look at how manly I really am" movie roles, and without Logan's fresh faced Norman to counter balance, the Sarge would be just another example of Pitt takes shirt off, Pitt looks like old dirty photographs, Pitt shaves like the Marlboro man kind of movie.  The costume and production design are lovely in a dirt and grit kind of way (Peckinpah would be proud), and the dialogue never traverses into eye rolling tedium and in fact often rings true what with religion and women often coming up in converstaions, but the blah unrealistic visuals and over dramatized soundtrack, the eyes and ears of the piece, drown out the furious steel encased heart of the beast. The man, his machine and his love of destruction.

5.5 Pitt really likes to talk German in WW2 movies out of 10 (MEDIOCRE)