Although loud, Fury still fires a blank.

Rating: 3/10 (10 January 2015)

If Saving Private Ryan is a heat seeking missile then Fury is a stray mortar. It has a target in mind, but is way off. There are ahem, 'similarities' in both movies (some would argue blatant concept rip offs). Although the WW2 setting is really where they end. Saving Private Ryan was a brilliantly constructed war epic which looked at soldier's battles, literally and figuratively - during a horrific time in history. It had gore, but the right amount at the right time - which can be highly effective. It had moments and conversations that were pertinent and not contrived, and showed us characters with great depth. Fury, was just dark and gory for the hell of it. In fact the gore was teetering on comical at times. Running over bodies, twice, thrice. Or the half a face left scorched on the inside of a tank wall. And how would war virgin 'typist', Norm - who had never seen battle or even fired a weapon react to said face on tank interior? 'Oh Darn', it seems...and then proceed to pop it in a bucket - instead of reeling back in horror, which would have been much more realistic. It gets better though. A few scenes on this rookie tank gunner swiftly morphs from melancholic mummy misser, to fearless tank ace screaming wildly at the Nazis. In fact, the naive young kid became so irrationally agro and unlikeable, we wanted him to die. I'm sure that wasn't meant? In fact, he and the entire tank squad were so over the top in their tacky, ribald behaviour - it was annoying. Sure, war can cause people to 'harden up' and become a bit sociopathic, but these characters were created to be downright Neanderthal -like; it was hard to watch. Brad Pitt plays Sergeant, 'Warddaddy' who is a part time maniacal, pugnacious, war crimes criminal - part time articulate philosopher. ''Ideals are peaceful, history is violent'' he exclaims at one point. Funny though, all this not taking the War Daddy advice is in fact what keeps Norm alive in the end. 'Don't surrender', he urges his young protégé at the end. Funnily, Norm's surrendering to a young SS soldier who, inexplicably doesn't report the sighting, saves his life - instead of the war daddy advised, shoot em up. The bible came up now and then, but seemed under effective as a component. Only until the final shootout did the religious Shia LaBeouf read a passage that one might have thought it would be the profound idea to sum up everything. But it wasn't. It was one of many segments in the movie that sought to establish some idea exploration, or emotional response - but didn't. They ended up being empty time fillers. As if it was just a gore obsessed flick with an uninspired attempt at a thought provoking war story. Apart from the intense, well shot action scenes- the rest were unnatural and artificial. For instance, the dinner scene promised some catharsis and some 'meat and potatoes' to the characters. Instead we got a bizarre scene where attractive 'shaking with fear' German girl, Emma, bursts into song with Norm on the keys. So once again, we are meant to believe a typist who is a gun on the piano is the only guy available to drive shotgun with a bunch of blood lusting tank guys. Right. Soon the rest of the squad stumble into the room, all liquored up which promised some pertinent confrontations. Granted there was some raw dialogue and a tense situation, which was for a moment promising something quite poignant - it too went nowhere. In fact, the detached tracks on the tank at the end was quite the metaphor for the entire flick. Loud but directionless. Almost as if the movie periodically switched between genres. War drama at times. Then bodies comically strewn everywhere, Tarantino-style at others. I found myself waiting the whole movie to get the point to it all when really I should have switched off and watched the bang bang. Oh and Pitt took his shirt off.