Visceral and unflinching, but without any real solid structure

Rating: 7/10 (28 July 2015)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
In 1945, as the Second World War draws to a close, Hitler has ordered a final, all out assault from every member of the Aryan race to ensure a clearly unattainable victory. In this culminating desperation, Tank commander Captain Collier (Brad Pitt) leads his squadron of men, only now they have a new recruit, in the shape of Private Ellison (Logan Lerman), who's got a whole lot of learning to do in the brutal realities of war.
The Nazi Supermen may not have lasted for a thousand years, as Hitler wanted, but yarns from the battlefields of World War 2 could quite conceivably do so, and Fury is the latest in a long line of such stories. David Ayer's addition to the genre thrusts us in to that period towards the end, when desperation to secure victory was pumping from both the sides of good and evil, more so evil, and as such their panic was leading to ever more extreme and twisted methods to win. As such, like the best war films, Fury does not shy away from showing the brutal, horrific reality of life in battle, unflinching in both blood-letting and human drama. Sadly, Ayer just bumbles the whole thing around, without any solid narrative or structure to hold it together.
The humorous touch from more recent films like The Monuments Men and Inglorious Basterds is not present, and the film is aiming to come off in the league of such fare as Saving Private Ryan and the lesser heard of, but raved about A Midnight Clear. But while those films did a marvellous job of bringing real characters to life, with deft, subtle touches that exposed their human frailties in the most real way, Fury's characters can't help but project the stereotypical blandness of your average war film. Pitt is an effective leading man, and he does his best here, but he doesn't quite have the charisma to really make it great. Likewise, the supporting cast are also unable to rise to their best.
It's a shame, as with tighter writing and a more structured plot, Fury could have risen from the good to great category. I didn't think it was quite as bad as a lot of other people seem to, but that's not to say I can't see the missed potential. ***