Looses a bit of the furious steam

Rating: 7/10 (20 February 2015)

Hollywood is abundant with war epics coming from skilled directors who put a classic edge to the genre , and creating a classic that would be memorable for years to come. Fury from start is an ambitious project , a movie directed ground up to visualize the clear and dense darkness in the lives of people during the war and worlds that collide in the gruesome battle for victory.
Now , when we talk about war movies one of the most prominent ones include Veteran Director Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket , which i feel is a brilliant war epic, does 2 things with perfection.
a) Give a gripping edge of the seat narrative b) And Build characters with a context and depth making you to root and care about them , even though they are a bit rude , and out of place with their characterization sometimes.
And what fury fails to do , is an error very significant , leaving a hole of void characterization. In this review I will breakdown and analyze the movie explaining the good and bad aspects of the movie and justifying my rating of 7.
1 ) Story :- David Ayer's previous projects such as fast and furious and end of watch , are good movies not known for its story , but it's character events and directional set pieces , with end of watch known for its different style of direction. It is surprising to see how David has evolved in his filmmaking career ,now venturing into a story , scripted , binding narrative driven experience. To be honest , Fury has the best story and a background atmosphere as compared to any of David's previous projects , and it is a good thing to see David Ayer working hard in favoring a strong storyline backbone , over shaky cams and out of context screenplay. The story of Fury revolves around a Sherman tank named Fury ,carried a hostile and deadly crew whose leader is Wardaddy, played excellently by Brad Pitt. Wardaddy commands his subordinates to take the tank and move into the enemy territory to destroy as many Nazi's as possible in the Eastern front. The story might look blunt on a first glance , but the rich narrative experience can grip you throughout the movie no questions asked. The story is beautifully crafted , but David is a good illusionist giving an existential presence of rich deeper flesh to a more on linear experience.
2 ) Casting and Performance :- Casting for this movie is spot on. With a wide array of characters in line starting from a man numb with battles Don Wardaddy played by Brad Pitt,Binkowski played by Jim Parrack , all of them resonate the essential elements of expressions and emotions of men tired with endless grinding battles. Michael Pena rides along David Ayer once again since end of watch doing his character justice to both the source material and the character itself. The standout cast member for me is Shia LaBeouf.Shia in the movie gives a stellar performance overthrowing even Brad Pitts acting throughout the runtime. Shia pin this movie plays the role of Bible Swan , with emotions throughout the spectrum exhibited by him. Shia easily shadows all of his previous mediocre performances from the transformers or even the unsuccessful Indiana Jones movie. One thing to be said , is that if Shia continues to give performances like this , then he would surely be an actor to be looked forward to for his future presentations. One of the biggest flaws in this movie though is the execution of chemistry between the characters. The ideal character model for each character keeps alternating and fluctuating , thus not giving you time to analyze and root for a person when the movie forces you to feel sad for something. Also there are many scenes in the movie that contradicts the moral code for these people on screen , but the characters never regret their decision. These minor hiccups bring the well narrated movie on a speed breaker as towards the end of the movie you would be puzzled to understand and create a character sketch of any living soul who was present on screen.
3 ) Direction:- David Ayer knows exactly how to take an intense scene and grind his cast to give a magnificent outburst to flesh out a gripping and ' edge of the seat ' experience. The movie can be divided into parts.
a) Character development structures b) The actual war scenarios
What David Ayer does effortlessly is the brilliantly choreographed action sequence. There are parts in the movie where I actually felt I was in the tank in the middle of the war , and a feeling of Claustrophobic environment easily steps in for any person viewing this film. The camera is used with a neat steady cam motion capturing every aspect of a dark gory battle , making this war epic virtually gritty and standing true and perfect to its cinematic ' R 'rating. What David fails to do is fail to make the characters grow on us. Throughout the entire movie,I did not bother to care about any of the characters as much as the director wanted me to. There were intense scenes in this movie where i had no reason or incentive to care about the safety of the characters lives. Each character with their dynamic personalities don't exactly shake well with the narrative of the story thereby acting as a bump in this smooth war drama.
On a whole , Fury is a well directed,well narrated well casted,characterized mess that is a good drama war movie that is way too ambitious for its current state. It might not be referred to or called a war epic , but David Ayer has done a perfect job is visualizing world war 2.