Fury (Review)

At the recommendation from an Army Captain.

David Ayer doesn’t really have the best reputation in recent years, though by all accounts, how Suicide Squad turned out wasn’t directly his fault.  He had one vision on the project and the studio had a different vision after the reception of Batman v. Superman.  So I was surprised to learn that Fury, a movie that was very well received (and for which Shia LaBeouf reportedly pulled out one of his own teeth for the role, instead of, you know, acting like he had a tooth missing.  You know, like an actor), and by all accounts, accurate, was also directed by David Ayer.

The first thing that struck me is that this film feels more like a movie set in modern times.  It doesn’t dwell on the heroism of WW2, it focuses on the mud and dirt.  The PTSD, the blood.  The parts of war that we more associate with modern war movies for our modern sensibilities.  The characters in this film are enlisted men, who are introduced fixing a broken tank while their old friend’s corpse is rotting in the seat next to them.

What also struck me about the film was how accurate it seemed about living in a tank.  The close, almost claustrophobic living conditions with no sense of privacy.  Privacy does not exist in this world.  That’s how it is portrayed.  The tank are these soldiers world, their country and everyone else outside the tank are outsiders and/or enemies.  This is the mentality of the movie.

At times the story seems to bog down and force a plot development that we’ve seen a million times before but I ignored that part just because everything about the scene before was fascinating to me.  Even the prolonged dinner scene during the middle of the movie was interesting to watch in order to see where these characters are coming from.  They may act terribly but their work is terrible.  In essence, the more people they kill, the closer they get to the end of the war.  Morality and ethics don’t play into their lives.

I didn’t care much for the plot of the film.  It seemed to be more or less what you would expect from a war movie.  What I was fascinated by was the interactions between these people and getting to know them for who they are as soldiers.