Entertaining, but still full of problems.
Fury is about a group of soldiers who operate a tank that they call "Fury". When I think of this I either think of an emotional story about a group of soldiers trying to deal with the horrors of war, or I think of the action packed adventures of a wild and rough crew as they travel across Germany killing Nazis. The sad thing is that Fury tries to do both of these things in the movie, and this just makes a muddled mess. I will explain this in detail later, but I'd first like to talk about the acting.
Most of the acting in this film is great, but not quite all of it. There are some moments of overacting, but those happen relatively rarely. The two standouts in the film are Shia LaBeouf and Brad Pitt, and as good as LaBeouf is he gets nowhere near to enough screen time in the film. One thing I really wanted in this film was more character development. For example: Michael Pena's character doesn't do much in the film, and I didn't feel much emotion for him. The frustrating thing is that you can see good characters in there somewhere, but they are never fully realized and brought to life. The only characters that get true development are Brad Pitt's character and Logan Lerman's character. The other characters get brief scenes of emotion here and there, but never truly get a chance to show their true character. It's like someone wrote a script full of dialogue and character development and someone looked at it and said "What's this? Who cares about character development?? Throw that out and put this tank battle in instead." While we're talking about scripts, I need to talk about the dialogue and screenplay of the film.
The dialogue in this film sounds like it was written by two people. Because at some moments there are choppy brutish dialogue lines, and at other moments there are poetic and emotional lines. The combination of these two things is jarring and feels very out of place. This is part of why I think this should have been two movies, not one. In one version of Fury they could have had the rough 'n' tough dialogue and tons of action scenes, and in the other they could have had more of the poetic lines and more character development. This leads me to my discussion of the action scenes and huge tonal shifts in Fury.
Another plus for Fury is the action scenes. They get your blood pumping and are executed well. But after those blood pumping scenes where characters are shouting things like "Yeah, screw you Nazis!" are sad and somber scenes of men shooting guns with piano music in the background, making us think "War is terrible.." This ultimately confuses the audience member, making them wonder, "Are we supposed to be cheering for the main characters or be saddened by the horrors of war?" This continues throughout the movie, and it is one of Fury's biggest flaws. Also, it seems that Fury is going for a realistic action film, so the almost cartooonish violence does not fit well. These are more reasons to split this into two movies. One can have blood pumping action scenes with cartoony violence, and the other could have saddening action scenes with realistic violence.
Fury is not an all bad movie, and this isn't a review just to trash the movie, there were some things I really liked about this film. One thing I loved about this movie was the camerawork. The first shot of the movie is haunting and beautiful, and there is memorable imagery throughout the film. Camerawork and lighting was very very good and I was pleasantly surprised. Another thing I liked was the score. The music, especially in the sad scenes, fits very well with the somber, gray visuals. I also liked the last half hour or so of the film. It worked pretty well for the most part.
Fury was a decent movie, I just feel like they should have taken more time to make it and flesh out the characters more and adress a few other problems. It seems like it was in a rush to be released. They either should have taken more time with it or made it into two movies. Despite all it's problems, I enjoyed Fury for the most part. If there ever was a movie fit for a re-do, it would be Fury. This film had a lot of potential, it just tried to do too many things at once, and made itself a muddy mess. Fans of war films won't be as critical of me, so if you like Brad Pitt or war movies, then I would suggest you go to see Fury.
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That and the South Park episode Scott Tenorman Must Die.
