7.5/10

Rating: 7/10 (22 February 2015)

A quality movie that I regretfully missed in theaters. Through it's scope and it's realism it paints a moving and uncomfortable picture of war, definitely taking a page for "Saving Private Ryan" on the visual front, but not always on the storytelling front unfortunately.
Ayer works very well both as a director and as a writer, he gives proof he knows what he is doing and even manages to pull off some very delicate elements: you can see from frame one that he did his homework and his research. In the last year or so I have really noticed how movies, especially true stories or history ones, will either pull your heartstrings with wide, epic moments or small intimate ones. I personally tend to prefer the latter, but I really missed looking at something in the middle and "Fury" really nails some of them. This is due to a really, really strong cast. I was thinking who shines the most, but I realized that I could have almost talked about every one of them. Brad Pitt is awesome, but that's kind of a given by now. I have been a Logan Lerman fan before it was cool to be so, I have humongous faith in this actor and this is yet another performance where every good word I said on him comes through. Moreover I will say that Shia LaBeouf, another actor whom as a performer I am a fan of (not of the person), really gives proof of his abilities and makes so much out of a role that any other actor would have made forgettable, hats off to him for that, I really respect him as an actor, he has a very strong on screen presence. Finally the film is almost flawless on the technical side: beautifully shot, sound is amazing and production design is staggering to look at. Yet, most of all was a brilliant use of very good music.
There are no two ways around the fact that "Fury" is overlong. There are moments where it slows down, but I actually really appreciated those, it just required a 15 minute sharpening in my opinion and could have been a lot better. But, my main problem with the movie is its flirting with realistic storytelling. As I said in the intro it does that only visually, on the other side it falls trap of many clichés that make their way into the movie the more you go on and whilst they were handled well early on the more it went on the more I thought: "I've already seen this".
"Fury" is a very intense and thrilling watch that I would definitely recommend, yet it isn't one that will really be stuck in your mind for long.