Fury: Imperfect But Searing

The opening moments of Fury consist of a brief history lesson divulging just how outgunned American tanks were by their German enemies during World War II. This mismatch was a sad reality that the historian in me had some knowledge of beforehand, and Fury does a respectable job of rendering this inequality a truly terrifying thing to watch as German Panzer and Tiger tanks begin to squash the American Shermans like so many metal bugs. While far from a masterpiece, Fury does its best to show just how terrifyingly brutal tank combat was for American tanker crews. Though nothing coming out of Hollywood could ever truly recreate the horrors of the war, I'll admit that this movie pushed the cinematic envelope further than most.

An extremely in-your-face spectacle of brutality, Fury is an unflinchingly violent movie that rubs your nose in the ugliest realities of World War II, a plan that works on some levels. On other levels, it’s about as graceful as a tanker crew trying to dance ballet and about as subtle as a tank round to the face, pummeling you with the horrific realities of the Eastern Front like rounds spitting out of some sort of indiscriminate thematic machine gun. Extremely matter-of-fact, as bleak and violent as can be, and linear to no end in the form of one violent encounter with the German army after another, Fury isn’t exactly ambitious. It sets out to tell a simple story, which isn’t entirely a bad thing, and thanks to some of the most ruthless and well-directed combat sequences I’ve seen this year, it’s a viciously nonstop, recklessly bleak, and strangely hopeless assault on the senses, less watched and more experienced even though there is admittedly little here to tie the violence together into a coherent bigger picture.

The crew of the tank itself is cast extraordinarily well, though they’re not exactly anything special to write home about characterization-wise. They perfectly fit the bill of a desensitized group of people who’ve seen too many horrible things to be moved by human suffering anymore. They take a weird delight in killing because the war has robbed them of any aversion to the act, stripping them of a level of their humanity and leaving nothing but the adrenaline rush of combat to steer what little moral compass they have left. Nevertheless, you'll see brief glimpses of surprising layers to these men I wish the movie had expanded on, and this won’t come as any surprise to you, but most of the crew doesn’t make it out alive, and whenever one of them dies, you feel the hole they leave behind.

On the downside, while Fury is undeniably immersive, it seems more interested in the overall viewer experience than in good story structure. Its matter-of-factness helps it in some ways but hurts it in others, and the subsequent horror shows of killing with no sign of any bigger goal in mind eventually get tiresome. I knew where the movie had been, but I never got a sense of where it was going or if it was going anywhere at all. It seemed to me not exactly unlike a good writer falling prey to a run-on sentence, an effective movie that churns on and on without any endgame in mind. It takes you along for the ride before deciding not to go anywhere too intriguing. Nevertheless, the horrific sightseeing tour along the way makes for a fittingly gruesome distraction from its shortcomings for the sake of a familiar cautionary tale, an unintended thrill ride, or some strange combination of both.

Fury is neither a condemnation nor a glorification of the actions of those who fought in the Second World War. In fact, it’s arguably something more important – a brutal, matter-of-fact story of an American tank crew on the European Front that never, ever pulls any punches. It’s refreshingly free of any significant social, political, or moral statements that would have undermined its unflinching commitment to immersing us in tanker culture, content to be an old-fashioned war story with a brutally modern coat of paint, nothing less but also nothing more, either. The movie isn’t subtle in any way, and neither does it try to be. Half of me wishes it were more graceful, and the other half respects its embrace of this gritty brutality. At the end of the day, Fury more than accomplishes what it set out to do, even if that goal wasn’t exactly ambitious – tell a down-and-dirty war story, nothing more, but certainly nothing less, either.

Fury – 7/10

Isaiah 6:6-8