I find this to be a wonderful movie. Then again I enjoy war movies so it kind of follows that I would enjoy this film. I enjoy them if they are realistic, patriotic, and provide emotional engagement. For me this movie checks all those boxes but does so in an atypical way. I recommend this film if you enjoy action films of the military variety.
Sargent Don ‘Wardaddy’ Collier, played by Brad Pitt (World War Z,) commands a 5 man Sherman Tank crew, with the tank nicknamed Fury, fighting in Germany towards the end of World War II. He is in a constant struggle to try and not lose himself in the barbarism and brutality of the war while keeping his men alive. He and his men are given a deadly mission behind enemy lines that will leave them out manned and out gunned and Wardaddy has to keep his men together for the fight.
So when I talk about realism in war movies I have to first say that no movie will ever come close to war. I have friends and family that have been in actual battles in war so there is no comparison. But I have been told that the opening battle scene in the 1998 film Saving Private Ryan is as close as you can get. Fury has much the same style violence that does Saving Private Ryan. What this movie does is introduce us to combat from the view of the guys inside the tank. The movie shows that while you are safer than the Infantry, gruesome things can happen while in a tank. Here is a scene showing some of the action in the movie.
Another aspect of realism that this movie is very successful at is the concept that war makes good men do evil things. I had a grandfather who fought in the war and my ex-wife’s grandfather did as well and neither one of them talked about the war. In the extra features of the Blu-Ray the director had a relative in the war and he didn’t talk about it and the director, who also wrote the film, David Ayer wanted to find out why and this movie was the result.
From the opening scene this conflict is apparent as Wardaddy kills a German Officer brutally, takes a step back, stops and looks down almost as if he wasn’t the one who did it, and then gets back into his tank and starts barking orders to his men. Wardaddy is constantly used as the picture of this conflict. Often he is in the same scene with Norman, played by Logan Lerman (Noah,) giving this lesson. Norman gets to see both the evil and the good of Wardaddy. Right after the first battle in the scene linked above, Wardaddy drags Norman out of the tank and brings him to where the infantry have captured a sole surviving German soldier begging for his life. Wardaddy wants Norman to shoot the soldier execution style because that is what they were sent here to do. Norman refuses so Wardaddy drags him to the ground, puts the gun in Norman’s hand, and with his hand, shoots the soldier in the back.
However, I did night like two scenes, one associated with the one above, that emphasizes the brutality of war. The first one actually involves Wardaddy and Norman again after their unit has taken over a small town and the both of them find two German ladies in an apartment above the town square. Here we see Wardaddy’s soft side as he gives the ladies some food to cook as well as cigarettes to either smoke or trade for other goods. Here Wardaddy, for lack of a better word, buries the War and tries to have a few moments of normalcy. He gets hot water and cleans up and Norman even gets to have sex, by a willing German woman, mind you, and all four sit down to have a meal. Suddenly the remaining members of Wardaddy’s tank unit come walking into the house with the purpose, it seems, to show the ugly American. Particularly ugly is Grady ‘Coon-Ass’ Travis, played by Jon Bernthal (TV’s The Walking Dead.) Coon-Ass comes walking in and can immediately tell, somehow, that Norman and the younger German girl had sex, so he immediately stats saying horrible things to the German girl about how all soldiers share everything. While Wardaddy puts an end to that harassment, Coon-Ass continues to be rude and disgusting to the girl. While this is going on, Bible, played by Shia LaBeouf (Transformers,) and Gordo, played by Michal Pena (Ant-Man,) proceeds to ask Wardaddy why they weren’t invited to this little moment of piece. Then they spend the next few moments showing why Wardaddy didn’t by explaining what they have seen in the horrors of war over the dinner table.
I felt that this entire scene was just over the top. To me the only reason to show this scene is to show that we Americans can be ugly and brutal because of war as well. But those three guys have been showing it the entire time with their treatment of Norman as well as their actions in the previous battles. For me those three went from being sympathetic tragic heroes to thugs who I care less about.
The other scene that bothers me a little is one of the final scenes in the film. Without giving up too much, the boys with their tank and three others are sent to a crossroads to hold it against an unknown number of troops. Only Fury makes it to the crossroads, towards the end of the battle Norman is underneath the tank trying to dig in and hide (you can guess what has happened to the rest of the crew,) because it turns out that they were fighting against a group of German SS soldiers. Wardaddy has been going out of his way the entire film to tell Norman how evil these men are and shooting them all on site. Don’t worry SS soldiers were almost all evil and deserved these fates. Anyway, Norman is busy digging in when one of these SS soldiers flashes a flash light under the tank and sees Norman. Now the whole movie has been a build up to how evil they have been and unforgiving these soldiers are trained to be. However, the SS soldier pauses, turns off his light, and then walks away. So now we have two conflicting scenes at the beginning and the end of the movie, the ugly Americans shooting a captured German soldier in the back, and an SS soldier with a conscious, who decides not to shoot or capture an American soldier who helped kill several of his fellow fanatical SS soldiers in a fire fight. Again the purpose of this scene seems to want to show Americans are just as evil if not more evil then the SS. Mind you the SS soldiers were some of the most fanatical in all of the German Army and many of them were guards at the many Concentration Camps in Europe. Why do we need to show that an SS soldier has compassion? Chances are, especially after a life or death fire fight, they wouldn’t.
All of this being said I still enjoyed the movie a lot and have added it to my movie collection. If you like war movies then you will like it too. The realism makes it a somber film and I don’t agree with the need to show the ugly American so much, but it is a patriotic film and Lord knows we should have a movie that makes us feel good about being American, ugly or not.
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[…] This movie was a joy to watch for me and I wasn’t expecting it. I wanted to see this at the movie theater but it slipped out of theaters before I could see it. When I finally got it to rent I loved everything I saw. The atmosphere of this film was dark and dirty. The battle scenes were hardcore, probably the bloodiest since Saving Private Ryan. The story revolves around a US Tank crew four of which have been together for 3 years who are breaking in a new gunner who was never trained in a tank. The opening ten minutes is wonderful in that it shows the horrors of what one man has to do to another when fighting a war. Then right after that it shows the man breaking down, falling to one knee, in order to try and come to grips with what he just did to that enemy soldier he killed. My favorite line in the movie comes from when Wardaddy, played by Brad Pitt, is showing Norman, played by Logan Lerman, a room full of Nazi party people who all committed suicide before they were capture by the US Army. Norman up to that point had a hard time coming to grips with killing the enemy and having a naïve view of it and when Norman asks Wardaddy why he is showing him this room Wardaddy respond, “Ideas are peaceful, history is violent.” I would love to post this saying on every anti-war rally in the world. Like I said the action is very good and very real. Although I am not aware of a tank unit doing what they did so the battles were fictitious in nature but do not detract from my enjoyment of the movie. I have lots to say about the film and you can find what I like in my review which you can find here. […]