Rapid Review: Fury (2014)

“Ideals are peaceful. History is violent.”
– Don ‘Wardaddy’ Collier

SYNOPSIS: April, 1945. As the Allies make their final push in the European Theatre, a battle-hardened army sergeant named Wardaddy commands a Sherman tank and his five-man crew on a deadly mission behind enemy lines. Out-numbered, out-gunned, and with a rookie soldier thrust into their platoon, Wardaddy and his men face overwhelming odds in their heroic attempts to strike at the heart of Nazi Germany. – via IMDB

Wow. Wow. I know that I was looking forward to this, I was very excited and all that, but wow. I love a good war movie, always have, always will I think. I love them like I love a good mob film, so either way, I knew that this should be good, I’ve been anticipating, and you all know I will watch anything with Brad Pitt in it. Fury didn’t fail to blow my mind, and I was reeled in and engrossed for every second of this film. What a goodie. There is so much that I want to say about it, but I am not quite sure if I can articulate it all. Let me see what I can do. Fury had everything going for it, I must admit. It has a great cast to carry the film, and let me tell you, not a single one of them disappoint. Brad Pitt embodies a soldier, a man who loves his men, but who has hardened due to the horrors witnessed. Jon Bernthal is reprehensible yet excels at it, Logan Lerman is definitely a young actor to keep your eyes on, Shia LaBeouf delivers another solid performance (he really isn’t a terrible actor people, even if he is weird), and Michael Peña also brought the goods to the table. The movie had some phenomenal sets, and not once did Fury hold back on depicting the horrors of war. Not once, and there were some really rough things that happened. It is a slow paced film, but never once gets boring. There are scenes that play out for a while, but instead of feeling like a filler or a waste of film, they drive home certain points that are being made. I enjoyed the character development of these men living together in a tank, though the most development certainly went to Pitt’s Collier and Lerman’s Norman – both characters who impressed me. The score worked so well with everything that was going on, and there were plenty times that I was at the edge of my seat and tensed up. The camera work was simply stunning, and things were so realistic at times it was frightening. I was horrified at the best of times at what I was seeing, and I thought Ayer was wonderful in the way he maintained all the emotion and injected it into all the scenes. I thought the pacing was good – like I said, slow and deliberate, and that was so great for me. Fury is such an intense film to go into, it was simply breathtaking, amazing, wonderful, gritty, dirty and nasty and truly heart-breaking. It conveyed all these emotions, and is definitely one of the best films of 2014 (struggling to find another 2014 to compete with it on the same level, actually). It is not like Fury will revolutionise the way we look at war movies or anything like that, but it was solid, consistent and knew what it wanted to do from the off. Also, one cannot neglect to mention the credits rolling at the end, they were done well you just sit there, watching, still turning over what you watched as well as seeing the work put into that. The music complements it, and the red and black and violence? Perfect summation of a great film. Obviously I cannot recommend this film enough. Go, go now. Go see it.