Usually when I call a movie “half of
a great film” I mean that is sets up well with a good first half,
and then loses steam later on. Fury is the exact
opposite – after a very lackluster opening hour, it comes on strong
to an exciting and emotional finish.
It is the final months of the European
theatre in WWII, and the allied forces are on German soil and pushing toward
Berlin. "Fury" follows one particular Sherman tank crew as it proceeds
through several battles, taking German towns and battling enemy
infantry. With green recruit Norman (Logan Lerman) as a gunner, they
end up finding themselves alone and outnumbered battling enemy forces.
In what I assume is an attempt to
depict the horrors of war, the film gives us very few admirable
characters. The tank commander Sgt. Collier (Brad Pitt) is
alternately decent and maniacal, indiscriminate about killing Germans
even to the point of murdering surrendering enemy forces. This
brutality is defended with a couple of examples of what mercy will get
you in wartime, where allied soldiers die when Norman hesitates to
kill.
The entire tank crew are equally
barbaric, particularly “Coon-Ass” Travis (Jon Bernthal) who
appears to have no morality at all. After taking a German town,
Collier and Norman use the home of two German girls to clean up and
eat, but when the rest of the crew crash the party and treat the
girls like animals, I felt the script went too far. It created a
lack of empathy for “the good guys” that left you wondering if
they actually were the good guys. War is hell and all that, but I
really felt this disturbing and long series of scenes was way
overboard for trying to display that fact.
Had the movie followed similar themes
throughout, it would have been a very poor effort indeed. But
luckily, at the midway point some nobility surfaces. Following a
battle with a German Tiger Tank that leaves our intrepid tank crew
alone behind enemy lines, their tank is crippled and immobilized by a
land mine. Shortly thereafter they discover that a division of SS
infantry is coming directly at them. Their options? Either hide and
survive, or else face this division head on and try to prevent their
passing through (which would result in flanking the Allied position).
Five against 300, they decide to fight the fight despite their utter
confidence they will all be killed, believing it's better to die
trying than to back out of an opportunity to assist their side.
This is when we find some really great
movie-making. Tense, action-packed and full of emotional impact, the
preparation for and the battle itself keep you on the edge of your
seat. War movies with this type of “last
stand” feeling can be really well done (“Saving Private Ryan”
for example) or really bad (the original “The Alamo”). This one
fits squarely in the former category, despite of bit of a Hollywood
cheat toward the end. This hour of film is so good you end up
forgiving the terse and cold inhumanity of the first hour.
Pitt gives his usual solid performance
(I find he has two gears: really, really good and really, really
great), but there are no weak performances here. Shia Leboef in
particular is excellent as Boyd “Bible” Swan. If you leave the
theatre after the first hour you will leave deeply disturbed and
unhappy with what you saw, but see it all the way through and you
leave satisfied that you've seen something well worthwhile.
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