← Back to Reviews
in
My take on the movie---
( admittedly I have a part of my earlier post here)
Almost 70 years down the line , moviemakers who earlier merely glorified their ( allied ) side in the second world war seem to have finally got the honesty to admit that their soldiers did some ungentlemanly things ( to put it mildly ) like shooting prisoners of war ( to hell with Geneva conventions ) and forcing themselves on unprotected German women....
Of course , in only a democratic country would such a portrayal of one's own soldiers be allowed....
FURY does show the brutal side of war all too well....one wonders if the next generation would even like to go to war after seeing this movie....
Unlike in other movies , real yellow flames pour out of any gun , cannon , exploding shell , exploding grenade and exploding bomb...
And as the enemy retaliates and the same material comes flaming towards you ( the camera is generally from the allied side ) , you get an idea of the fires of hell....This is most spectacular during night fighting when the golden yellow of the flaming firepower is silhouetted against the dark ( the climax action scene is largely in the dark ) but impressive even in daylight....
And a living breathing talking loving caring human being can be dead in minutes---as the character played by Logan Lerman finds out when a German girl he has just made love to is killed within minutes after that by a bomb.....and he too missed just by a whisker , he could have been dead too....
He is a young man ( or is it just a boy ) who has been put into the thick of the 'action' ( if such a slaughter can be called just 'action') inside a Sherman tank of the American army....and the tank is called FURY....
To be honest , the going is good for the Americans in the movie---for the third reich is on it's last legs as the allies push from all sides into Germany . They don't have to face the full might of the German war machine and it's panzers like the Russians and French and others had to do....
But the fanatical Germans are not giving up even now , and the fighting is tough as it gets...
Even schoolboys and schoolgirls are being forced by the nazis into the fight , making it almost a free-for-all....
Lerman is a little older than them , but he can't bring himself to kill humans initially....something that exasperates the commander of the tank ( superstar Brad Pitt ) , a battlehardened and battlescarred ( they really show the scars on his back in one scene ) veteran of the war....
So off he is sent for his baptism of fire---shoot a captured German soldier dead....something he cannot do until his hands are forced into doing that by Brad Pitt...
So this is our hero of the movie ( Brad Pitt ) , a man who openly flouts Geneva conventions by shooting surrendered soldiers....
And he is arguably one of the better characters in the movie....so is there anything good that can be said about the others ?? Naah....
So if the Amercan soldiers are like this , what about the far more brutal Russian soldiers and the absolutely barbaric German nazis ?? Fortunately , that is left to our imagination....
So you are shown war as it really was , where good and bad is hard to distinguish....
And how hard it is to distinguish , is starkly brought out by what happens when these Amercian soldiers stumble upon German women....
To be honest it was a bit distressing to see the supposedly decent soldiers of a supposedly civilized nation like the United States practically coming to the point of rape on German women---only to be stopped from doing so by Brad Pitt....and even he kind of forces Lerman to have sex with a young German girl , who has no choice but to give in---though admittedly she has taken a liking for Lerman .
Of course ,it is clear that where people like Brad Pitt's character are not there , there must have been real scenes of rape....this by the 'civilized' amercian army , mind you .
The only explanation that you can comfort yourself with is---
These soldiers did not want to be in this war , it was thrust upon them....
They would have been happy having consensual sex with their wives and girlfriends back home and would not have thought about raping anybody .
But war has already brutalized them...
And above all they have been away from sex and women for months...
In such a situation physical needs make men do all these things .
I would prefer to believe that these soldiers are not born rapists , but the situation is such that they need to fulfill their physical needs.
But things always don't go the Americans' way , and that's what happens when they are faced with a formidable Tiger tank of the German army....and also when FURY is left alone to tackle a group of 300 German soldiers....
So can they survive when faced with real odds ?? Does Wardaddy ( Brad Pitt's character in the film ) show the reserves of courage to fight a hopeless fight ?? Can Lerman overcome his softness and become a man ?? What about the other members of the tank crew ??
Watch the movie for the answers....
The glory of seeing the fighting was increased by watching the movie in IMAX form , which made the scenes come closer to the audience....
Acting by everyone was super , and the visual and sound effects just great...
Of course , the film is littered with gory scenes of death and destruction and shattering of bodies----is not for the fainthearted....
The climax shows action at it's very best , but moves away from the realism . Just an epic one sided massacre , with an unbelievably humanitarian gesture at the end....but no doubt it's great to watch....
And the director does show the leading actors as real heroes in the end , inspite of the unethical and immoral things they have done---just a group of normal but brave guys caught up in the mess of a war....
Verdict---Good .
( admittedly I have a part of my earlier post here)
Almost 70 years down the line , moviemakers who earlier merely glorified their ( allied ) side in the second world war seem to have finally got the honesty to admit that their soldiers did some ungentlemanly things ( to put it mildly ) like shooting prisoners of war ( to hell with Geneva conventions ) and forcing themselves on unprotected German women....
Of course , in only a democratic country would such a portrayal of one's own soldiers be allowed....
FURY does show the brutal side of war all too well....one wonders if the next generation would even like to go to war after seeing this movie....
Unlike in other movies , real yellow flames pour out of any gun , cannon , exploding shell , exploding grenade and exploding bomb...
And as the enemy retaliates and the same material comes flaming towards you ( the camera is generally from the allied side ) , you get an idea of the fires of hell....This is most spectacular during night fighting when the golden yellow of the flaming firepower is silhouetted against the dark ( the climax action scene is largely in the dark ) but impressive even in daylight....
And a living breathing talking loving caring human being can be dead in minutes---as the character played by Logan Lerman finds out when a German girl he has just made love to is killed within minutes after that by a bomb.....and he too missed just by a whisker , he could have been dead too....
He is a young man ( or is it just a boy ) who has been put into the thick of the 'action' ( if such a slaughter can be called just 'action') inside a Sherman tank of the American army....and the tank is called FURY....
To be honest , the going is good for the Americans in the movie---for the third reich is on it's last legs as the allies push from all sides into Germany . They don't have to face the full might of the German war machine and it's panzers like the Russians and French and others had to do....
But the fanatical Germans are not giving up even now , and the fighting is tough as it gets...
Even schoolboys and schoolgirls are being forced by the nazis into the fight , making it almost a free-for-all....
Lerman is a little older than them , but he can't bring himself to kill humans initially....something that exasperates the commander of the tank ( superstar Brad Pitt ) , a battlehardened and battlescarred ( they really show the scars on his back in one scene ) veteran of the war....
So off he is sent for his baptism of fire---shoot a captured German soldier dead....something he cannot do until his hands are forced into doing that by Brad Pitt...
So this is our hero of the movie ( Brad Pitt ) , a man who openly flouts Geneva conventions by shooting surrendered soldiers....
And he is arguably one of the better characters in the movie....so is there anything good that can be said about the others ?? Naah....
So if the Amercan soldiers are like this , what about the far more brutal Russian soldiers and the absolutely barbaric German nazis ?? Fortunately , that is left to our imagination....
So you are shown war as it really was , where good and bad is hard to distinguish....
And how hard it is to distinguish , is starkly brought out by what happens when these Amercian soldiers stumble upon German women....
To be honest it was a bit distressing to see the supposedly decent soldiers of a supposedly civilized nation like the United States practically coming to the point of rape on German women---only to be stopped from doing so by Brad Pitt....and even he kind of forces Lerman to have sex with a young German girl , who has no choice but to give in---though admittedly she has taken a liking for Lerman .
Of course ,it is clear that where people like Brad Pitt's character are not there , there must have been real scenes of rape....this by the 'civilized' amercian army , mind you .
The only explanation that you can comfort yourself with is---
These soldiers did not want to be in this war , it was thrust upon them....
They would have been happy having consensual sex with their wives and girlfriends back home and would not have thought about raping anybody .
But war has already brutalized them...
And above all they have been away from sex and women for months...
In such a situation physical needs make men do all these things .
I would prefer to believe that these soldiers are not born rapists , but the situation is such that they need to fulfill their physical needs.
But things always don't go the Americans' way , and that's what happens when they are faced with a formidable Tiger tank of the German army....and also when FURY is left alone to tackle a group of 300 German soldiers....
So can they survive when faced with real odds ?? Does Wardaddy ( Brad Pitt's character in the film ) show the reserves of courage to fight a hopeless fight ?? Can Lerman overcome his softness and become a man ?? What about the other members of the tank crew ??
Watch the movie for the answers....
The glory of seeing the fighting was increased by watching the movie in IMAX form , which made the scenes come closer to the audience....
Acting by everyone was super , and the visual and sound effects just great...
Of course , the film is littered with gory scenes of death and destruction and shattering of bodies----is not for the fainthearted....
The climax shows action at it's very best , but moves away from the realism . Just an epic one sided massacre , with an unbelievably humanitarian gesture at the end....but no doubt it's great to watch....
And the director does show the leading actors as real heroes in the end , inspite of the unethical and immoral things they have done---just a group of normal but brave guys caught up in the mess of a war....
Verdict---Good .