The theory and practice of war

Rating: 10/10 (17 October 2014)

The annoyance of this picture is the stupidity of some of the criticism. A Brit moron has already complained it doesn't show any Brits. Hello, chauvinist assclown, how many Brits were there in the Second Armored Division? As many as there were Yanks in the Battle of Britain. What utter stupidity. As for the film itself it's probably one of the best evocations ever of the squalor, waste, horror,filth, fear and general nastiness of war. An American Sherman , Second Armored Division style, rolls across Germany. The war's almost over, but people still die in the hideous hundreds every day and missions are only accomplished in blood expenditure. The central image, almost a lietmotif, is a closeup of a trank tread crushing through anything in its path. That's war: huge, brutal, sloppy, unfeeling, destructive. A crew calls their vehicle FURY and goes about business with weary, frightened but determined professionalism. The new guy is too tender for this rough treatment, but he learns. The Sergeant treats him with tough love. Meanwhile, everywhere, people keep getting blown up or set on fire. The lucky ones get a shot in the head. Real tanks are used, so the sense of them has hulking tractors of war is intense, and the movie creates combat more pursuasively than anything since "Private Ryan." (But wait? Where were the Brits on Omaha beach! Why it's a crime Spielberg didn't show them!) Some reviewers, with great talent for missing the argument, say all the guys are stereotypes, but that's the point, not the mistake: war grinds you to your elemental self. You cease to be who you were and become this new animal, tired, scared and, as the greatest generation happily proved, willing to serve and die despite the misery of the ordeal.