Fury is Dark and Unforgiving but it Shows How Terrible War Really is

Rating: 9/10 (3 July 2016)

I was so excited when Fury came out. I loved End of Watch (I still do, I re-visit it often) and seeing a gritty war movie with actors like Brad Pitt, Jon Bernthal and Michael Pena seemed like it was right up my alley. With Suicide Squad (David Ayer's new project) coming up, I decided to watch it again. I think this movie has a lot to offer, it does give an absolutely grimy look at World War 2 combat showing the evils of both sides but it has its flaws too and while I think it's easily one of the better war movies to have been made lately, it falls short of the very best of the genre (Saving Private Ryan or Schindler's List just to name a couple).
*Minor Spoilers Ahead* We start Fury on a deserted battlefield in Germany. The battle has already ended, the soldiers and the machines of war that remain are lifeless. The year is 1945, the tide of the war has already turned but the Nazi resistance has yet to stop. If anything it has gotten more fanatical for some and that much more desperate. A lone German rider trots across the field, surveying the damage, perhaps looking for survivors. He comes across what looks like an abandoned tank when something leaps from the shadows. Don "Wardaddy" Collier (Brad Pitt) tackles the rider and stabs him right through the eye. He lets the horse go and returns to the tank. The tank has merely broken down and his crew is trying to fix it. His crew consists of Coon-Ass (Jon Bernthal), Bible Swan (Shia LaBouef) and Gordo (Michael Pena). There was another member of the crew but his remains will need to be scraped out of the tank when they get back to camp. After Wardaddy wails on Coon-Ass to get it started, the tank roars back to life and they head back to camp.
You don't see too many movies about tank crews and one of the best things about Fury is that it's determined to show something different when it comes to WW2 movies. Every war movie shows you combat tactics and the civilian casualties but Fury really dives down into how appalling things got. The remains of soldiers get literally hosed out of tanks, food is traded for sexual services and child soldiers are forcibly recruited and murdered. It's really unpleasant to watch at times, there's a scene where Wardaddy and Norman (Logan Lerman) try to play house with a couple of German girls and it goes terribly. A lot of people complain about that scene and while it is disturbing and uncomfortable, I think it was important for the development of Norman's character and it's so tense you can't look away. We've seen a lot of movies about WW2 and it's a credit to Ayer and his crew for finding a different way to show how things really were.
There's a pretty good cast here and while this probably isn't the type of movie that gets people nominated for Oscars, they all perform well. Although this is Norman's story, Brad Pitt is the star of the show. He's got a commanding presence as Wardaddy, he becomes a father figure to Norman over the course of just one day but to Pitt's credit he's never made to be completely likable. He's been through the ringer and he's the type of soldier who does the dirty work (both for the good and the bad) to get things done and Pitt is very good in the role. Logan is solid but he's not given a lot to work with. Norman doesn't have a lot of backstory but Logan is great at looking scared. Bernthal and Pena are both excellent, they're playing the more unlikable members of the crew and you get where they're coming from. The biggest surprise was Shia who was really good as Bible. If anything this movie proves that no matter how crazy he is, when he gets good material and he commits, he's actually a good actor.
Getting to the action scenes, most of them are actually really great. You get to see ground assaults (they include the tracer bullet effects which was new to me), short air battles from the ground and actual tank battles. One of my criticisms of Fury is that the action scenes are so good earlier that they kind of point out the implausibilities of the final battle. There's a scene where the crew goes up against a German Tiger tank and it was awesome. The ending just doesn't seem as grounded and while it doesn't ruin the movie, it was a little disappointing.
The only other thing that I didn't like was that it the movie took place over one day. The characters that they created were fascinating and I wish I could have seen them play out over a longer period of time (getting to know a little more about them). I get why they did it this way but there's so much in just a short amount of time, spreading it out might have been better.
Fury isn't flawless but it is a good entry to the war movie genre. You get to see some different things including how awful the Allied soldiers could be at points compared to how terrible the Nazis could be at the end of the war (coming from Canada you only get the Allied side of the story). You also get to see the atmosphere inside a tank, how claustrophobic and dirty it was. David Ayer's commitment to creating an authentic "on the ground" war movie comes through and while it might not be my favourite movie of his (End of Watch), I liked Fury a lot. There's a good cast, a realistic environment and a good story to be told about how the lines of morality get blurry when a World War comes to a close.