Fury is an entertaining, but not very memorable, war film

Rating: 7/10 (15 January 2015)

With so many wars available as an inspiration for modern cinema, I like the fact that World War II keeps being visited with quite a frequency, because it was the last conflict with perfectly defined "good ones" and "evil ones", and with a concrete purpose which wasn't guided by ambiguous economic goals or questionable political interests. What I don't like too much is that, in 21st century, I generally keep finding the same clichés of the films I used to watch when I was a kid with my dad, in which John Wayne or William Holden played brave soldiers who didn't only fight the enemy, but who also represented the noble and fair North American ideals of post- war world. The difference is that, back then, it was considered propaganda, and nowadays, it's considered art... or sarcasm, according to the spectator's criterion. Anyway, the point is that Fury is a clichéd and not very memorable war film, but nevertheless, I found it entertaining, mainly because of the solid performances. Brad Pitt brings a credible and charismatic work in the leading role, and he's well complemented by Shia LaBeouf, Michael Peña, Logan Lerman and Jon Bernthal. Fury employs the same characters and situations from old war films, but its representation of the combat displays in detail the effect of the bullets and explosions over the human body, as well as the degradation of physical and psychological conditions in the line of battle. But the blood and devastation don't feel morbid or gratuitous, but as a reminder of the price many people paid for the sake of freedom (or whatever we currently enjoy). So, Fury isn't an excellent or particularly memorable film, but it managed to keep me entertained, and I can give it a moderate recommendation mainly because of its adequate balance of drama and action and the good performances.