Brutal (Anti) War Drama Let Down By Weak Ending

Rating: 7/10 (29 March 2015)

After complaining that the recent Neill Blomkamp film CHAPPIE suffered from a painfully ill thought out marketing campaign I must confess that David Aye's ferocious war actioner was an even bigger victim of poor marketing . Seeing the promos for this film last Autumn it was one movie I was going out of my way to avoid . You know the clips I'm talking about with handsome Brad Pitt bragging he'd been killing Germans all the way from North Africa to Germany . Okay I'll be the first to admit that some American units had this dubious privilege but compare this to many British units such as the 51st Highland division who'd spent 1940-45 fighting against the Germans non stop . That said I'm knowledgeable enough to realise that this pales in to almost insignificance when you realise the Chinese and Japanese had been fighting each other since the early 1930s . Europeans do have a very Eurocentric view of history but like so many people in Europe I wasn't keen on seeing yet another Hollywood revisionism of history especially when all the marketing material revolves around FOUR Americans in ONE American tank holding back hundreds of Waffen SS soldiers
It's not often a film surprises me . No on second thoughts let me rephrase that and state it's not often a film shocks me but this is exactly what FURY did . For the most part it tries to avoid the Hollywood clichés and when it doesn't such as newbie and reluctant recruit Norman being introduced to the tight knit and battle hardened unit it does disguise the clichés quite well . Where the film works best is showing the relentless inhumanity of war . It's not a case of clean cut Americans with high moral values beating the ghastly Germans and nasty Nazis without suffering a scratch but a grim unrelenting battle to the death where there's no real winners until democracy triumphs over tyranny . Absolutely nothing is held back and as someone who has seen a lot of war films I was actually quite shocked as to some of the on screen incidents especially the scene where Norman is bloodied in to shooting a prisoner . This is a brutal and depressing film of the type I thought I'd never see Hollywood attempt especially since recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are still fresh in the memory
It's hardly two hours of feel good entertainment but the bleak and nihilistic tone makes it an absolutely outstanding piece of American film making for the most part but then for the last half hour the film then proceeds to shoot itself in the foot , the head and every other piece of anatomy you can think of as Brad tells his men - all four of them - that they'll be defending a crossroads with their broken down tank against several hundred Waffen SS troops because
"I ain't ever run away from anything and I ain't about to start"
Bare in mind their tank has broken down , the war has only a few weeks to go and they could have easily made it back to safe lines without being charged with desertion or dereliction of duty so there's two options left to them . The sensible one that'll see them live and pick up their war pension or the stupid one that'll see them give the audience 20 minutes of ridiculous over the top mock heroics that the film company can stick in the trailers . I suppose being film characters they'd quite happily sacrifice their lives to do the film company a favour but at the same time I'd like to see a film where characters do something understandably human and sensible , especially if they've got American accents . The final climatic battle scene is as every bit as ridiculous and overblown as you'd expect to see in the worst Hollywood Rambo type flag waver as literally hundreds of Germans are mown down left , right , centre , background and foreground which goes totally against the bleak nihilistic scenes that preceded it . The fact that it ends with most of the Americans dead doesn't make it any less ridiculous
This is a great shame because up until the final act I was very impressed with what I was watching . Again let me repeat this is in no way a feel good movie and if you don't like war films you'd quickly be turning this off due to the graphic violence on display and this refusal to sugar coat the grim and horrific face of conflict is what made FURY so refreshing to me . Such a pity the film had to end on a seen it all before cliché ridden denounment