Title: Fury
Rating: 3 Stars
This came out ten years ago or so. It received fairly respectable reviews at the time, but as I was watching it now, I was alternating between a 2 star and a 4 star rating.
It's set during the last month or so of World War II. Everyone knows that the war is over and that Germany has lost, but the Germans still fight on. Don (Brad Pitt) is a tank commander. He, along with his fellow tank crew members Boyd (Shia LaBeouf), Gordo (Michael Peña), and Grady (Jon Bernthal) have fought in North Africa, D-Day, France, and are now fighting in Germany. They've recently lost a crew mate. A greenhorn (Norman (Logan Lerman)) who has never even been inside of a tank has been brought on as a replacement.
They are sent on a series of missions that include rescuing trapped troops and taking a town. They are sent on a mission to defend an unarmed supply train. Following fierce battles, their tank ends up immobilized at a crossroads that they must protect at all costs. It is here that they must make their final stand.
Let's talk about the parts that seem worth a four star rating. The film has a gritty realism. The soldiers are dirty. The roads are mired in mud. Everything seems to be beaten down or blown up. The production went into great detail to recreate the World War II experience.
The film also made interesting choices regarding the morality of war. Sure, you see evidence of Nazi atrocities. Multiple people are hanging dead at the side of the road.
The cruelty is not exclusive to the Nazis. By April of 1945, Don and his hardened crew have been fighting the Nazis for years. It has left them brutalized. They have absolutely no mercy for Nazis. This is especially true of SS officers. Don orders an SS officer suspected of ordering the hangings to be summarily shot.
By the time of April 1945, Nazi soldiers are often conscripted young boys and old men. At one point, Norman refuses to shoot a Nazi soldier because he is just a child. His refusal leads to American deaths, causing him immense guilt. Later, Norman refuses to shoot a captured Nazi soldier. Don holds Norman down, places the gun in his hand, and forces Norman to shoot him dead.
In relatively short order, Norman's hatred of the Nazis becomes all consuming and by the end he is relentlessly gunning Nazis done while screaming obscenities at them.
War is evil and brutal and brings out the evil and brutality in all men, regardless of the color of the soldier's uniform.
All of that seems deserving of an at least four star rating. What parts of it brought it down to two?
Well, it was all frightfully derivative. As I was watching, it seemed like every scene was a callback to a specific film or to a trite theme that's so often recurrent in war movies.
Granted, Saving Private Ryan probably ruined all future World War II films with its excellence, but Fury seemed to be especially derivative. Both films have graphic, grimy, seemingly realistic battle sequences. In both films you have leaders that have to be strong even though they suffer from bouts of weakness. In both films you have a geographically, ethnically diverse group of men that, even as they bicker, clearly love each other and are indeed a band of brothers. In both films you have the newbie untrained soldier that has to be babysat by the other soldiers. In both films, you see the soldier's innocence shattered and see his brutality come forth.
The final battle is essentially another version of Custer's Last Stand. Hopelessly outnumbered, all that the men can do is to bravely fight to their death. The final scene, an aerial view of their tank surrounded by scores of dead Nazis was reminiscent to me of the final scene from Platoon as Charlie Sheen's character looks at the bloodbath of his final battle as he lifts off in a helicopter.
In Fury and in All Quiet on the Western Front, you have the brutality of the war interspersed with an almost domestic scene with women willing to do anything to stave off death or worse from their invaders.
Finally, and kind of weirdly, there is Brad Pitt playing a character that is dangerously close to Lieutenant Aldo Raine from Inglorious Basterds. Clearly Raine is played much more broadly to darkly comedic effect. Even so, they are both strong leaders that have an implacable hatred of Nazis and the undying loyalty of their men. I understand Pitt's box office appeal, but did we really need to see him in another film killing Nazis just five years after his previous one?
There you go. Usually when I give a film or a book a three star review, it truly means meh. In the case of Fury, I didn't feel meh about it. Half the time I was watching it, I really enjoyed it. The other half of the time, I found myself wanting just a bit more originality.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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