Review of Fury (2014) by Logan W — 23 Feb 2015

So this is an interesting commentary on war. It has a little more on its mind than average war movie in terms of just combat. It's intended to be a revisionist picture which I personally think gels okay with the visceral battle scenes, as opposed to most.

I didn't really get too much of a sense of higher meaning out of this film, except that people in the war were just ordinary people, even the Axis Powers. It made its dots and dashes without being too philosophical about it.

This isn't a "Are people inherently good?" type of film. In retrospect, the enemy is not all hordes of stereotypical baddies like they are played up to be. Most of them are out there just doing their jobs like we were.

War is not these ironclads and juggernauts. It's just a shitton of small sacrifices made by second-rate soldiers. I can see why there were stories of fist fights on the set, because this is an intense movie.

David Ayer is really good at depicting relationships under pressure and the twists and turns of it. They fight, break up, kiss and make up. So the U.S. has already essentially won the war, and yet these guys still have to go fight off the remaining German troops.

Germany has gotten desperate and is throwing everything at the wall. Kids and women are used as projectiles. The movie views war very much as a numbers game. Whoever has less bodies piled up at the end is the real winner.

It takes a very dark tone and has a very dark atmosphere. Towards the end it gets very hellish mindful of October Skies era. So one of these old-tymey gents is the stoic leader (with porcupine quills for hair), one is the super-religious preach&teach man, one is the rawhide redneck (who steals the stage), one is the foreigner token minority, and, last and least, the fresh-faced new kid on the block.

They should've called this the Tank of Cliches. However, my sights were fully focused through both the low and high-aims of this movie. That's not easy to do. There is top-level acting across the board.

The guys here aren't given the hackneyed nicknames of hometowns this time, so that's a load off, however the nicknames they do give are a bit unoriginal. I'm just picking nits, I know. Like how the pause they take in the middle to have a meal was a little prolonged and tested my patience some, but I still enjoyed it and the dramatic shift it took to put things in context.

This is a horror show. Also, I felt like such a candy-ass coming away from this. I haven't been through anything. My worst day is nothing compared to these guys best day. And I feel I have to like these movies or else I'm un-American.

Like if I don't I should just go join Al-Qaeda. So 3 stars.