Dirty Half Dozen-Minus One

Rating: 8/10 (17 October 2014)

I saw "Fury", starring Brad Pitt-World War Z, Thelma & Louise; Shia LaBeouf-the Transformers movies, Constantine; Logan Lerman-Noah, The Butterfly Effect; Michael Pena-End of Watch, Battle Los Angeles and Jon Bernthal-The Wolf of Wall Street, The Walking Dead_t.v.
This is a WW2 movie that reminded me of an old Sgt.Fury & His Howling Commandoes comic book. If you like WW2 movies-and I like good ones-it has all the elements needed, including a tough leader, Brad, taking his men into battle against those dirty old Nazis in April of 1945 in Germany, during the last few weeks of WW2. Brad is in charge of a Sherman tank called Fury-it's painted on the barrel of the tank-and everyone has appropriate, descriptive nicknames. Brad is Wardaddy, and his squad includes Shia_Bible, Michael_Gordo and Jon_Coon-Ass. After loosing a fifth man in a heated battle-they were the only survivors to hobble back to base-Logan joins the team. The only problem is that Logan has only been enlisted in the Army for about 8 weeks and he was a clerk. It doesn't take long for Logan to discover the true meaning of the old saying, War is Hell. The battles are really brutal, in a Saving Private Ryan way. In the opening scene, Brad takes out a German soldier on a horse that brought several squeals from the audience in my theater-Brad does not use a gun. There is a 4 on 1 tank battle-4 Shermans against 1 Tiger-that is pretty engaging. But, if you have a weak stomach, you may not enjoy this one; one of Logan's first duties is to take a bucket of water and clean his seat in the tank-where his fallen predecessor once sat-and not only is there blood everywhere but even chunks of flesh and body organs. I saw a few of the actors on talk shows saying how they were encouraged by the director to get into actual fist fights with each other before filming a scene. He said it would help the actors bond with each other. It seems to have worked. The movie ends ala Alamo style with Brad's Dirty Five taking on about 200 German soldiers in a spectacular and bloody battle. It's rated "R" for violence, grisly images and language and has a running time of 2 hours & 14 minutes. I enjoyed this one and would buy it on Blu-Ray.