“Ideals are peaceful – history is violent.”

It’s the cold hard truth of the matter, verbalised by hardened veteran, Don ‘Wardaddy’ Collier (Brad Pitt), in an effort to annul the peacenik ideals of Private Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman), a typist clerk ordered to serve behind enemy lines in Nazi Germany. And it is the thesis for the film as we follow the titular American war tank and its occupants: damaged, battle weary individuals jammed in the middle of history in the making; protecting the world against the Nazi threat at great personal cost to themselves.

The first half of the film lacks a driving plot. Like Full Metal Jacket before it, it operates as a window on war, illustrating interpersonal relationships amidst the tragic yet inevitable moral corruption that occurs within the armed forces as a consequence of what their job requires them to do. And it is a hypnotic, nail-biting experience.

The film does not resile one iota from graphic violence and the horrors of war and we, the audience, get a front seat view through the eyes of the pacifistic Private Norman. It’s plain to see that the fear of death is in everyone, even the tough guys and everyone has their own facade of denial, a mask that only slips when they think that no one is looking. It’s a most effective portrayal of battle of a kind seen in the opening moments of Saving Private Ryan.

While the first half of the film is supremely tense stuff, the tension is significantly diminished in the latter half of the film with the sudden and inexplicable introduction of a love interest for Private Norman – an emotive device seemingly introduced to explicitly (and superfluously) demonstrate the loss of war. But this element of the film is so brief and ham-fisted that it is devoid of any emotional punch. The pair literally meet, copulate and fall in love (in that order) in the space of around 5 minutes – Romeo and Juliet have nothing on these guys! The fact that this all happens within the theatre of a war zone makes the encounter even more incredulous. And worse than that, it slows the pace of the film to a crawl.

The film then concludes with an ‘American hero against impossible odds’ showdown which, while mildly exhilarating (and highly improbable) in an action movie kind of way, further cheapens the sombre thesis set up in the film’s first half.

Brad Pitt is solid as always but the surprising performance here comes from Shia LaBeouf who proves he can be excellent in a gritty role. He’s so good, in fact, that without his usual nervous, twitchy shtick and clean baby face he’s quite difficult to recognise. Logan Lerman is also effective as our frightened proxy within the film: the office clerk thrown into the meat grinder and forced to kill.

Fury is very much a film in two parts. The first half is a fabulously tense depiction of the horrors of war. The second half is standard American war film fare, isn’t terrible, it’s just ordinary. It’s as if the film hits its mid way point and suddenly feels the need to add a ‘story’ when the truth is that a simple depiction of the horrifying nature of warfare has a story all its own. For the first half alone, though, Fury is worthwhile viewing.

Stuart Jamieson
www.fury-movie.net