Movie reviews: Fury

Warning, spoilers ahead

As a fan of tanks, and World War 2 history in general, it should come as no surprise that I was going to see this film eventually. Fury is an American war film directed by David Ayer, and starring well known actors such as Brad Pitt and Shia LeBeouf. The film focuses on a solo tank crew as they fight in Germany towards the end of the war, and uses real tanks and weapons to depict the action scenes, including the only working Tiger tank in the world (Tiger 131 from the Bovington Tank Museum in England).

With the last WW2 film I'd seen being Micheal Bay's Pearl Harbour (ugh), I was very much hopefully that Fury could wash out the disgusting after taste that Pearl Harbour had left, and it certainly didn't disappoint me. It's grittiness and realism reminded me of Saving Private Ryan (another film I enjoyed), and yet it's just so much more dark and bleak that the film's all the better for it. The bleak hopelessness of it all really allows you to contact with the characters, and understand both their plight and how they've become the people they are today.

Speaking of the characters, even Shia LeBeouf manages to pull off a great performance in the wake of his dismal role in the Transformers films. He plays Boyd "Bible" Swan, the gunner of the American M4A3E8 tank, a character who is perhaps closest to Brad Pitt's character, Don "Wardaddy" Collier. Wardaddy is the tank commander in this film, and provides a strong driving force for the story, often getting into conflict with his own crew at times as well as the enemy. This gives the impression that they really are a WW2 tank crew, who are simply struggling to survive and battle through the horrors of war.

The film mostly follows from the perspective of Norman Ellison, and the relationship he has with Wardaddy and the rest of the crew. As the new kid who has yet to kill anyone or be in any sort of combat situation, a lot of Fury's crew start off hating him, seeing him as more of a liability than a fellow crew member. This worsens when Wardaddy takes a personal interest in him, almost taking Norman under his wing in a way. 

However as the film develops they start to become closer due to the circumstances they are forced into, and by the end the Fury crew ends up respecting Norman (giving him a war name of his own; "Machine"), who just like the rest of his crew is forced to leave a lot of his humanity behind in order to survive. That's a lot of what this film is about really, people who've lost their humanity, and are simply trying to fight and survive the war through the only means they know how.

Fury does begin to lose a bit of realism late on, during the crossroads battle, where an SS battalion somehow manage to suffer massive losses against five men and a damaged tank. The rest however is gloriously realistic, and I couldn't help but jump up and down in my seat when the Fury and three other Sherman tanks faced off against a Tiger. That was indeed the highlight of my film, seeing what I believe to be the best tank battle ever shown in a movie before.

Overall though I'd say this is a good film, despite the hollywood style ending. It is definitely up there as one of my favourite films of 2014, and one of the best war films I've seen to date. Is it better than Saving Private Ryan though? Well, that's a question I'll have to think long and hard about, though I'm certainly not complaining about being given a reason to watch the film again.