So, I had an unplanned day off and managed to find myself close by the theater with time to kill. Fate handed me Fury. This film is one I fully expect to get Oscar considerations, etc. and I will be disappointed if it doesn't. One quick point before I dive into the question of wit. This film was 2'14" and managed to feel like an hour and a half, tops. It had a flow that I'd place up against most movies of its kind.
To wit. One thing that occurs to me now is the extraordinary discretion of this film. Often, in order to avoid being graphic, a film has to water down or at least temper the harshness of its message. On the opposite end, a film like 12 Years a Slave, which I'm certainly not criticizing, in order to achieve a full and honest portrayal of the times and circumstances gives us a jagged realism that occasionally requires very graphic imagery. This film has some really haunting moments of violence, sexual and otherwise, but it includes zero instances of nudity. It isn't without violence. A lot of people die, but the violence never felt gratuitous to me. This was a late add, but I gave it an extra .25 for wit, though it might as well have been split between the three categories because it required deftness in each.
Beyond this, in wit, I find it hard to differentiate between the writing and acting, but the core group and even some of the outliers in this film are outstanding, as characters. Again, it could be down to the actors, to the director, or the writers. The core of this film is split between Brad Pitt and Logan Lerman. These two are really good. Brad's Wardaddy, who's often also referred to as Don, is quiet, but he's a leader. He's also at times the most frustratingly complacent character. He wants a better world, but so callously accepts the bad, at times even spurring it on.
Logan's Norman aka Machine is our little everyman, certain that he doesn't belong at the front. But we're never given any real backstory on this or any character. This might be the most important part of what makes this movie a great war movie. We never see a flashback or any setup. We only see men behaving as they do in the theater of war, pure and raw. One of the great elements of this kind of dirty, grimy war story is that it acts as a heightener. We see men whose virtues and vices have been called into play. A coward will be shown as he really is and so will a bully. A brave man and a scoundrel. And sometimes these come from the same person.
I know this sounds weird. I know I never believed I would say this. But Shia LaBeouf is finally believable as an adult in a movie. Beyond that. This is the first time I've ever seen him command a scene and put together a consistent and enriching performance. He may be the best part of the movie. His character, as far as I know only ever referred to as Bible, is an embodiment of everything I love and hate about evangelical, particularly revival-driven, Protestant fundamentalism. He is sincere, forthright, and earnestly righteous. He is also overbearing, judgmental, and at times callous. He is beautiful and human from first to last.
One more highlight is Jon Bernthal, who I'd hitherto only known from The Walking Dead, playing Coon-Ass. He is the most frightening 'good-guy' in this film, but even he has his moments, little glimpses that remind me that even the bully and the rake are human, for all their faults they have the fire of God inside. He is powerful and frightening in a way that plays like a lesser Joker, but maybe even more so because of those glimpses of light. And in many ways he's a hero, if only because anyone half-decent looks like one when they're fighting the Nazis.
Michael Pena would have deserved some serious praise but he never really gets a scene to himself. Jim Parrack, Laurence Spellman, and Brad William Henke have their moments along with Jason Isaacs, who more or less has a cameo, but a memorable one. Alicia von Rittberg also deserves a word. Her subtle playing with Logan and her background reactions to Jon are very important to selling the whole thing.
All of this feels like it places me near a perfect score, but I did have one serious grievance that brought it down to 9.75. But in order to do it any justice I have to get into some stuff.
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The ending is a little bit cliched. The everyman as the only survivor is a holdover from that obscure time in storytelling when we felt we had to justify how the story got to us. It is unnecessary and cheapens the very real feeling of the movie. I don't mind the sole survivor, but there's nothing gained from and there is a great deal of probability against the youngest and least experienced soldier around surviving a situation that kills everyone else in the whole tank division. And the flashlight under the tank. Silly.
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On to wisdom. This one isn't as drawn out or groundbreaking. There is the customary -.25 for some silly comments about sex and being young. It's nonsense, but it's so common some take it for sense.
On the plus side, we have the idea that there were bad Americans and good Germans. Groundbreaking at one time, but pretty commonplace now. We even have the idea that one person, in an extreme situation can be both the good guy and the bad guy in different moments. That's a little deeper. Add to that some flattery about the 'good bits' in Scripture and I round it back up .25. That leaves us just where we were at with a 9.
For wonder, as with most well-made films, I don't have a whole lot negative to say. The positives come from three camps. The director's credit, which is mostly having accomplished the seemingly impossible in coaxing real acting from Shia LaBeouf is worth a little bit.
Beyond that, the two more technical achievements are a solid score that builds the film without taking it over and one strange choice I assume was made in post about gun/cannon fire. A brief perusal of the internet revealed to me that this is a real thing used at the time. One of the bullets in a round was called a tracer and it helped the shooter to see where they were shooting. These were also on the cannon shot, to aid the gunners in tank battles, which is one of the highlights of the film, action-wise. I may be rounding down a bit, but this brings my total here to 9.5.
This is just my fifth 28.25, which puts it in around the likes of Elf, What Maisie Knew, The Life Aquatic, and How to Marry a Millionaire. I believe it also now puts it above two of the three other war movies I've rated so far. This may be high, my first watch ratings always seem to be, but the others might be low, which I often believe to be true of some of my older ratings. We may never know.
If you do decide to watch this film, I hope you enjoy it, not least on my recommendation. Be careful there are intimations, though nothing explicit of unwholesome sexual relations, including sly references to rape. And a lot of dead people and some disturbing war deaths, but those might be obvious. Enjoyez!
