Fury (15.)
Starring David Ayers.
Starring Brad Pitt, Logan Lerman, Shia LaBeouf, Michael Pena, Jon Bernthal and Jason Isaacs. 135 mins
War films, uh huh, what are they good for? Glamorising conflict and glorifying the men (on our side) that fight in them, mentally preparing audiences for the wars to come: same as they always have. The only thing that changes are the norms of glory and glamour held by society at the time they come out.
Fury applies new levels of carnage and Nam levels of cynicism to the previously sanctified combatants of the great war. Fury by name, furious by nature, it opens with Pitt stabbing a Nazi in the face and doesn't let up. Fury is the name of his tank, the five man crew of which he had previously kept alive through conflict in North Africa, France and Belgium. Now, April 1945, they are fighting in the fatherland itself, Fury has suffered its first fatality and a young kid, Lerman, has been sent to replace him in the tight knit crew.
In Saving Private Ryan, during the initial D-Day landing sequence, Spielberg came close to achieving the wild delusional dream of all directors of war movies: to create a depiction of warfare so intense, so shocking, so gruelling that nobody in the audience would ever countenance it again. The effect didn't last though and before the end you were guiltily waiting for the talky bits to end and to get back to the fighting bits. The war film to end all wars only really succeeded in raising the bar for those that followed.
It's a challenge that Ayer (End of Watch) takes on manfully, splattering body parts left right and centre. His vision of war is all mud, murk and muted shades, enhanced by cacophonous amplified rumblings on the soundtrack. It has some silliness though: Pitt's character is very similar to his Nazi hunter in Inglorious Basterds; during one battle sequence it seems to move instantly from dusk to total darkness and the gunfire, shown in yellow and green bursts, looks like the kind of laser gun used by the Cylons in the original Battlestar Galactica.
It makes some bold moves though. WWII films soldiers are generally shown as heroic and good but Fury explores the idea that people who have been dehumanised by war probably have no place to go back to society after it has finished. They are as jaded as Nam movie vets and Bernthal's character is the equivalent of Animal Mother in Full Metal Jacket. It includes the traditional intermission sequence, common to most war films where the soldiers get to mix with real people and rediscover their humanity. When this sequence starts, in a newly liberated German town, you expect this to be the soft soap moment. In fact it is probably the harshest moment in the film. It is I think unprecedented to see the Great Generation depicted so sourly on screen.
Fury is a harsh and gripping war movie hopped up on its realism, but it is still a war movie. In its final third this Tank finds five reverse gears and roars through them as backs away at pace from every uncompromising position it had previously taken: realism is replaced by ridiculousness, harsh cynicism with glory
Starring David Ayers.
Starring Brad Pitt, Logan Lerman, Shia LaBeouf, Michael Pena, Jon Bernthal and Jason Isaacs. 135 mins
War films, uh huh, what are they good for? Glamorising conflict and glorifying the men (on our side) that fight in them, mentally preparing audiences for the wars to come: same as they always have. The only thing that changes are the norms of glory and glamour held by society at the time they come out.
Fury applies new levels of carnage and Nam levels of cynicism to the previously sanctified combatants of the great war. Fury by name, furious by nature, it opens with Pitt stabbing a Nazi in the face and doesn't let up. Fury is the name of his tank, the five man crew of which he had previously kept alive through conflict in North Africa, France and Belgium. Now, April 1945, they are fighting in the fatherland itself, Fury has suffered its first fatality and a young kid, Lerman, has been sent to replace him in the tight knit crew.
In Saving Private Ryan, during the initial D-Day landing sequence, Spielberg came close to achieving the wild delusional dream of all directors of war movies: to create a depiction of warfare so intense, so shocking, so gruelling that nobody in the audience would ever countenance it again. The effect didn't last though and before the end you were guiltily waiting for the talky bits to end and to get back to the fighting bits. The war film to end all wars only really succeeded in raising the bar for those that followed.
It's a challenge that Ayer (End of Watch) takes on manfully, splattering body parts left right and centre. His vision of war is all mud, murk and muted shades, enhanced by cacophonous amplified rumblings on the soundtrack. It has some silliness though: Pitt's character is very similar to his Nazi hunter in Inglorious Basterds; during one battle sequence it seems to move instantly from dusk to total darkness and the gunfire, shown in yellow and green bursts, looks like the kind of laser gun used by the Cylons in the original Battlestar Galactica.
It makes some bold moves though. WWII films soldiers are generally shown as heroic and good but Fury explores the idea that people who have been dehumanised by war probably have no place to go back to society after it has finished. They are as jaded as Nam movie vets and Bernthal's character is the equivalent of Animal Mother in Full Metal Jacket. It includes the traditional intermission sequence, common to most war films where the soldiers get to mix with real people and rediscover their humanity. When this sequence starts, in a newly liberated German town, you expect this to be the soft soap moment. In fact it is probably the harshest moment in the film. It is I think unprecedented to see the Great Generation depicted so sourly on screen.
Fury is a harsh and gripping war movie hopped up on its realism, but it is still a war movie. In its final third this Tank finds five reverse gears and roars through them as backs away at pace from every uncompromising position it had previously taken: realism is replaced by ridiculousness, harsh cynicism with glory
