Fury is the story of World War II writ small. It is told, in large part, from the inside of a tank--and curiously only when the story strays from the tank does it lag or lose its focus.
Perhaps the characters are not all that well developed but the actors fill the gaps in the script with, well, acting. This is a well cast movie with everyone taking on the mantle of a tried and true World War II archetype. We know the religious guy, the redneck and the "fish out of water" clerk who winds up assigned to a tank.
We also know Brad Pitt's macho, blustery Sgt. Don "Wardaddy" Collier. He walks away with a swagger and stops, shaking with his hands clasped to his head when no one can see. He, and all the other actors in the tank crew; show their own sorts of "tics" through the film. And this rings true with the recent book, Guns of Last Light by Rick Atkinson. By this point in the war pretty much every fighting man in Europe was at the edge of their mental endurance. How they all didn't crack is some sort of miracle. The film rejects the "Greatest Generation" hokum of news anchors trying to sell books; the real men were just that, real men, not supermen. It makes what they did more impressive, not less.
Perhaps the characters are not all that well developed but the actors fill the gaps in the script with, well, acting. This is a well cast movie with everyone taking on the mantle of a tried and true World War II archetype. We know the religious guy, the redneck and the "fish out of water" clerk who winds up assigned to a tank.
We also know Brad Pitt's macho, blustery Sgt. Don "Wardaddy" Collier. He walks away with a swagger and stops, shaking with his hands clasped to his head when no one can see. He, and all the other actors in the tank crew; show their own sorts of "tics" through the film. And this rings true with the recent book, Guns of Last Light by Rick Atkinson. By this point in the war pretty much every fighting man in Europe was at the edge of their mental endurance. How they all didn't crack is some sort of miracle. The film rejects the "Greatest Generation" hokum of news anchors trying to sell books; the real men were just that, real men, not supermen. It makes what they did more impressive, not less.
The film also agrees with Atkinson's book in another way Americans don't always like to see; taking prisoners, especially SS prisoners, was not a high priority. Atkinson's book has it that there were oral orders to basically shoot SS prisoners. And, especially after the Battle of the Bulge, there is lots of evidence that a "Death's Head" emblem would get you a bullet to the head if captured.
And who could blame them, especially after years of becoming inured to gruesome death being all around you? Add to this the expectation that your own death was around every corner. Imagine at the end of the war, when you know the Nazis are beaten, the anxiety over being killed when victory was just a matter of time?
Fury might not be a great movie but it is at the very least, quite a good one. It may be a movie that requires a few viewings to properly assess it. It is competent and well paced showing the roughness, the anger and the violence of war. It rarely gets sentimental and the action scenes are both gruesome and gripping.
And who could blame them, especially after years of becoming inured to gruesome death being all around you? Add to this the expectation that your own death was around every corner. Imagine at the end of the war, when you know the Nazis are beaten, the anxiety over being killed when victory was just a matter of time?
Fury might not be a great movie but it is at the very least, quite a good one. It may be a movie that requires a few viewings to properly assess it. It is competent and well paced showing the roughness, the anger and the violence of war. It rarely gets sentimental and the action scenes are both gruesome and gripping.
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