The 'Fury' of War

War is horrible.  Some people try to glorify it, but it sucks.  In the film, Fury, directed by David Ayer, I felt like he tried to portray that message.  Nobody ever wins a war.  Either you die physically or you survive and die internally.  At least that's the message I got from this film.

Logan Lerman plays Norman, a young man who is thrust into battle at the end of WWII.  Norman is assigned to the tank Fury, commanded by Wardaddy, played by Brad Pitt.  Along with them are Shia LaBeouf(Transformers), Michael Pena(End of Watch), and Jon Bernthal(The Walking Dead).  These men are charged with cleaning up Germany in 1945 and fighting off the last of the Nazi regime.

Along the way Norman learns the horrors of war from his tankmates.  Some of whom he disagrees with, but they must all work together if they are to survive an attack from over 300 Nazi soldiers.

The strongest part of this film were the performances.  At first you think Pitt is just doing his Inglorious Bastards character, but as the film goes on you see him as a much deeper character.  At the end of each battle he must take a moment to shutter at what he has done.  He must also keep his men in check who are being driven mad by years of killing.  On the other side of the coin is the new kid, Norman.  Norman has to learn to kill a man to preserve his life and those of his comrades.  I thought Lerman did a great job of trying to play that innocence, and then had that moment when he gets it; he gets what he has to do to live. 

 The rest of the crew gave solid performances that made each of their characters likable.  The film also felt like it was a smaller, more personal story, than other war films.  With five men in a tight space you have to feel the relationships between them.  The two strongest scenes were when Wardaddy was making Norman give out his first kill, and also when Wardaddy tries to have a sense of normalcy when running into two German women who were trying to hide.

The weakness in this film is it's predictability.  At the beginning you can guess the end, and they're really weren't any surprises.  However, I liked how it was about the men running the tanks.  A lot of war films we see infantry or pilots.  This was a nice change of perspective.

David Ayer did a fine of job of showing us how horrible war is, the tough decisions soldiers make, and how it effects them.  I really liked the final shot of the film.  I think it speaks to the strength of the men inside Fury, and the tragedy of war.

RATING:  B-