Brutal war drama

Rating: 7/10 (25 October 2014)

Fury is a tank operated by Sgt Brad Pitt and his crew in Germany in the closing days of World War II, against increasingly desperate German forces. This film tells of events from the arrival of inexperienced replacement Norman (Logan Lerman) to a battle to hold back forces at a strategic crossroads.
If I had a criticism, it would be that there was no sense of an overriding narrative purpose to tie together the episodes which the Fury crew go through. In particular, there is a lengthy sequence in an apartment with two German girls which seems to have little to do with what comes before or after and, in showing strange and unpredictable behaviour from all the crew members, doesn't provide too much clarification on the effects of war on them, either. It is a good sequence, but it leaves you uncertain as to what it was intended to achieve.
But, for the most part, this is a very good film. It conveys the brutality and violence of war in the visceral Saving Private Ryan fashion, and you get a strong sense of what it must have been like to have been there. It is brilliantly staged, and the performances are mostly very good (although I thought Logan Lerman, despite having some very good moments, mostly had his face stuck in one unchanging expression).