Ayer's good mix was not quite enough

Rating: 7/10 (17 October 2014)

When I first heard that David Ayer was creating a war film, I was thrilled. I knew he would have that good mix of intimate dialog and intense action that helps audiences fall in love with his characters. This mix was especially prominent in Ayer's End of Watch.
I felt Fury barely scratched the surface with these components, leaving me unsatisfied and dry-eyed. In Ayer's defense, this could have been the lack of chemistry or stigma amongst the actors. Shia LaBeouf, for example, has been an absolute douche bag off screen, making it hard to sympathize with his character. And then there's Logan Lerman. That boy should be nowhere near a war film. I get why he was casted, though, for he fit well into his role as Charlie in Perks Of Being A Wallflower. In this film, he played an innocent, passive teenager. And these same qualities were spotted in his role as Norman. But then there was a random point in the film where he was no longer that innocent boy and starts gunning people down like he's Scarface. C'mon. I get that war can turn a boy into a man, which was probably the symbol of Lerman's character, but it just wasn't believable.
Ultimately, I didn't feel much of a sense of "brotherhood" from Fury. At least not nearly as much as I felt during End of Watch, which was, in my opinion, what made that film so great.