“Ideals are peaceful. History is violent,” said Don Collier.
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When Sergeant Don ‘Wardaddy’ Collier—Brad Pitt’s new persona in his comeback to Nazi-hunting business—says “wars are never going anywhere” loud and clear; he has actually defined the whole story of Fury. Approaching the end of World War II, The Allies has breached Germany land—the end of the war is near, but, they know that the enemy won’t surrender.
In the midst of war, Don commands a Sherman tank with his four crews—Boyd (Shia LaBeouf), Gordo (Michael Peña), Grady (Jon Bernthal), and rookie Norman (Logan Lerman)—swarming to occupy city by city. Outgunned and outnumbered, this platoon beats the shit out of themselves to survive in enemy’s land. But, wars are never going anywhere, really.
For the whole 2 hours and a quarter, Fury convincingly depicts the vivid horrors of the WW II that sometimes remind us what a hell on earth those wars are. As a war movie, it has the quality of being loud, violent, and intense at once; but the main point of Fury that I caught is the eerie claustrophobic nightmares that follow our five-pieces “hero.” The tank battles are well-choreographed and, by far, those are the most spectacular features. Director David Ayer (writer of acclaimed Training Day and The Fast & The Furious) does all his best to prove that tanks might be the most vicious battle gears as well as the most ‘unsafe’ one for those who fight from inside it.
What makes every horror alive is, most obviously, the chemistry between the A-listers led by Pitt. I always believe that those quintets are not typical American heroes or killing machines; they’re just a bunch of depressed men—tired of war, tired of killing—but they have to ’cause they believe that’s the best job they ever had. The bond of Pitt-Lerman might ignite a little hope in the middle of the war; Mr. Not-Famous-Anymore, LaBeouf has transformed into someone, who isn’t him; Peña and Berntal mostly appear as ‘clowns’ but their jokes are funny but showing more bitterness. When such on-screen chemistry appear, I suddenly forget that Fury is the film in which Pitt and LaBeouf screw each other for LaBeouf’s hilarious method (google it!).
I personally do not really like war movies—but when Fury ends up making me gasped for some time after the credit rolls—I know that this can be the best war movie for some time. Almost every moment in this movie leaves me thrilled; even, if there’s some moment that ‘slows the movie down’ for a while, the atmosphere in such scenes makes me insecure—wondering whether the protagonists are really safe. Things go far south reaching the finale—and that’s the moment where the instensity lasts longer than the whole duration.
Fury might suffers from some cliches in plot and over-the-top celebration of the violent bloodshed; it doesn’t have (or doesn’t need) a more distinctive resolution in the end. Even so, Fury succesfully combines violence, intensity and explosion with decent drama fueled by well-acted performances by the A-listers and well-choreographed tank battles.
Fury (2014)
Drama, Action, War, History Written & Directed by: David Ayer Starred by: Brad Pitt, Logan Lerman, Shia LaBeouf, Michael Peña, Jon Bernthal Running Time: 134 mins Rated R for strong sequences of war violence, some grisly images, and language throughout
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