Plot: In the waning months of World War II, Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman) is assigned to a gruff unit that operates a tank dubbed “Fury,” commanded by Don “Wardaddy” Collier (Brad Pitt). As their missions become more dangerous in Germany, Norman is reluctantly thrust into the role of a killer.
When I saw the trailer for Fury, it looked like a mediocre, paint by numbers war movie with very little character. Until the last half hour of the film, that’s exactly what I got. While the movie gets progressively better as it goes along, there’s too much goodwill lost early on for me to be totally enamored. Aside from a few good performances, the characters don’t start rounding into form until much later. Let’s start with those performances, which are for the most part, uneven.
Logan Lerman is definitely a good up and coming actor. He was solid in Noah earlier this year, and his performance in The Perks of Being a Wallflower was praised incessantly. The problem with his character is that he’s either one extreme or the other. Norman has no experience in the army, and is clearly terrified at the prospect of killing anybody. I understand this is the point, but they go way too far with his whininess and fear. There’s no subtlety whatsoever. But then in two scenes later, he’s the ultimate killer who’s practically thirsting at the next chance to kill. Norman is swearing “fucking nazis” all over the place. It’s completely ridiculous. I don’t blame the actor at all, in fact it may have been even worse if a lesser actor was at the helm. This is all David Ayer’s writing and directing. It’s hard for me to get into your story when your protagonist is all over the place.
Brad Pitt seemed to be the most consistent character. He’s all business and intense, and is clearly given the best lines of dialogue. He’s the classic leader who puts on the act of feeling no remorse, but you can tell this war has ripped him apart. He’s very Wolverine-ish in that regard. Him and Lerman have some nice scenes together.
The supporting characters are where the real problem lies. Shia LaBeouf pulls off an admirable effort as Boyd, a Bible obsessed religious man. The character is severely underwritten, but Shia is able to muster up a personality for this guy, even if a lot of his scenes consist of him sulking in the corner. Then we have the obnoxious douchebags of the group, Trini and Grady, played by Michael Pena and Jon Bernthal respectively. These guys were walking clichés. Pena is there to read unfunny one-liners, and Bernthal is the annoying guy with an accent. While you empathize with Bernthal’s character late in the movie, it’s not enough to make up for the fact that he was really annoying most of the way through.
While the characters were inconsistent, the biggest issue was in the pacing. There’s absolutely no reason for this movie to move as slow as it does. There’s one scene in particular that was one of the worst written scenes I’ve seen in a while. I respect what they were trying to do, which is bring something to the table with more meat than your average war film, but it falls completely on its face. It’s a breakfast scene where Wardaddy’s crew dine with a couple German women in a village they just invaded. It’s the longest, most excruciating uninteresting way of telling the audience these guys have it rough and they don’t like the new guy (Norman). It was painful to sit through. And then two minutes after it ends, the movie undercuts most of the scene by lazily throwing out the most hackneyed emotionally manipulative plot device imaginable. Ugh. What a disaster.
Every time the movie gets boring because the characters are so underwritten, they immediately just go to a tank battle. And while these sequences are filmed extremely well, it’s hard to get into the action when you don’t really care about the people in them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OGvZoIrXpg
For all the bashing I’ve imposed on this film, the last leg does pull it together. You start to care about these people, and the last battle is pretty intense. The only downside to this ending is that it’s painfully predictable the whole way through, but at least it goes out with a bang.
If it weren’t for a strong last half hour and Brad Pitt’s performance, this could have been a lot worse. If you really love war movies, you’ll probably enjoy this, but there was too much mediocrity for me to really get into it. Like most movies I review, this could have been a lot stronger if it came in under two hours. There’s no reason to have as many tank battles as they do, it just becomes redundant. If there was an award for “Best Performance by a Tank,” this might get consideration, but that’s about it.
Rating: 6 out of 10 (“meh”)
===========================================================================================================
Daniel Cohen is the Film Editor for Pop-Break. Aside from reviews, Daniel does a weekly box office predictions column, and also contributes monthly Top Tens and Op-Ed’s on all things film. Daniel is a graduate of Bates College with a degree in English, and also studied Screenwriting at UCLA. He can also be read on www.movieshenanigans.com. His movie crush is Jessica Rabbit. Follow him on Twitter @dcohenwriter.
===========================================================================================================================================
