"If I was to watch the film again..."

Rating: 5/10 (9 November 2014)

"Fury" is a brutally honest depiction of war, following the five man crew of a US Sherman tank during the Allied Army's final push on Germany in 1945. Although it's close to the end of the war, 'Wardaddy' (played by Brad Pitt) points out that "a lotta people gotta die" first, and boy do they in this film, in fact so much so in the final third of the film that it lets it down. Yet as the dead built-up I found myself consistently referencing back to Boyd 'Bible' Swan (played by Shia LaBeouf), telling Norman Ellison (played by Logan Lerman), to wait till he sees "what a man can do to another man" and that is what this film is all about; the horrors of war. The film is obviously anti-war and this is vividly illustrated by the impact of the conflict on the five man crew. We can tell these men are changed men and we see this change in its entirety in Lerman's character, whose performance is commendable here, going from hesitating to kill to enjoying it. These men are broken by war and we see this for example in the moments when Pitt's character goes to take a break from it all with a cigarette in mouth, almost breaking down, and incredibly well-acted. These painfully long shots have impact. It is important here not to forget to mention how well the rest of the crew perform too. What I picked out best of all though was how these men were just as bad as the Nazis, leading me to question whether any one side was worse than the other. The film's director, David Ayer, does well to pose these questions. He also does extremely well in the first two thirds of the film. If I was to watch the film again I would stop at the end of the second third and give it 4 stars, but the film's final third lets it down. The finale is full of blood, guts and glory and, although it is somewhat fitting considering the questions that Ayer poses, did well to detach me from it, leaving me far from caring about the lives, even of the crew members, that were being taken as well as the questions that Ayer had done so well to pose. A tank battle just before this also did well to detach me, with the Nazis suddenly forgetting how to aim, but hey, this is Hollywood. The film's strengths instead lie in its earlier stages, as well as its cast, all doing well to emphasise that war really is hell.