superb moments amid 'Hollywood' war-time stuff

Rating: 6/10 (4 November 2014)

I have to wonder if Fury had been made by, I don't know, Sam Peckinpah or Robert Aldrich or George Roy Hill or someone if it might be more effective or memorable. Of course, those guys have been gone for years, and David Ayer seems to want to aspire to those filmmaker's heights of having real 'macho' male cinema on a grand Hollywood scale with blood and guts and camaraderie for the characters and all. Fury is more ambitious for this director than some of his past work - think Hard Times with Christian Bale or even End of Watch, which had a wonderful script and performers amid some terrible direction - and he clearly put a lot of heart and soul in to it. Sadly, there's some Hollywood Movie-BS as well.
This isn't to say the premise isn't intriguing, and one we might have not seen quite this way, though there have been countless WW2 flicks: a young man, basically untrained outside of clerical work (Lerman) is assigned to the 'Fury' tank led by Brad Pitt and including the likes of Shia LaBeouf (rocking a mean mustache), Michael Pena and Jon Bernthal, and among them he is by far the greenest of the lot. The men don't like him that much - the beginning of the film shows one of their men has just died, which is why they need a replacement - but have no choice as they plunge ahead in Germany near the end of the war.
The problems with the story come from familiarity, and lots of it. It's hard, for example, if you have seen Saving Private Ryan to not see the similarity with Jeremy Davies joining Tom Hanks' bunch in that film. This time Ayer ups the sort of 'horror' quotient of war, like Pitt's Sgt making Lerman's character shoot a captured German soldier and it becoming a whole big thing. It's tough to watch, but more-so because it feels too melodramatic, even for a war film. Of course Pitt's character has his reasons: as he says he's killed Germans in Africa and throughout Europe for three years, and he's been weathered by the war. It sets up a natural conflict to have this newbie in their ranks who has to come up to snuff with where the real MEN are at (in caps).
There's a lot of big talk, and even bigger war set pieces, especially when it comes time for tank vs tank (and while the Fury isn't the only one, there are a few others, it comes down to one tank vs the other and it is probably the most thrilling part of the film as far as the action goes). But the characters just didn't seem that deep at all, though the actors certainly try to imbue them with more. Pitt of course just has full-on Star quality, as he also did in his other (much greater) war flick Inglourious Basterds. LaBeouf is half very good and half... well, when he gets upset in a scene or emotional, tears flow and it feels just uncomfortable to watch. Bernthal is one dimensional. Pena is okay, and Lerman does what he can as the sort of "audience" surrogate.
Fury does have a tremendous set-piece though, which feels almost like a short film amid the other set-pieces of the whole (its not like there's one mission for the Fury tank, it's a bunch leading up to the climax which Ill get to in a moment). But it doesn't involve a lot of violence on the physical scale really; the men take over a German town that's been a stronghold for a long time, and Pitt and Lerman see a couple of women looking at them from an apartment. They go up, and at first we're not sure what will happen. But Pitt... just needs a shave, and some food, maybe, and he can speak German which helps, and encourages Lerman to spend 'time' with the younger, more attractive (really, really beautiful) younger woman (I believe he says "If you don't take her, I will"), and yet it's not savage, it's more delicate and about trying to find that human connection that, as the film drills into the audience, has been lost by April of 45.
But this isn't all - the other men in the Fury tank come up to the apartment as well, and it becomes much more tense and awkward, especially with Bernthal's meat-head personage. The scene takes on so many qualities and feels like Ayer at his true strengths here: showing power dynamics, especially between men, how women figure in to it, and what trauma does if you stop and think about it. It's not like the film stops to have this whole scene in this apartment unfold, on the contrary it seems like it's from a better, more engaging film.
Sadly, this doesn't last though, and the climax is disappointing mostly as the characters do what they do just because it seems like the time to do it in the story, and it gives one of the main characters a big 'out' that doesn't feel earned or properly explains. It just seems to happen because, you know, Screen writing-Hero reasons. Fury ultimately is a grueling, depressing and super-violent and grim film that may do what it's supposed to do for an audience, but it's also come after movies like it before and doesn't explore (with some exceptions) what can be more remarkable about a war film in the little moments.