Anyone seen 'Fury' yet?
I saw it Friday night. It was a lot more harrowing and bloody than I thought it was going to be. I don't know why I expected that. Nearly every war film in the post-"Saving Private Ryan" era seems to go as far as they can in the direction of nearly unwatchable violence in the name of being 'authentic'. Sometimes, it helps the filmmaker to tell the story better. Oftentimes, though, it seems gratuitous.
'Fury' had a mixture of both, I think.
It seemed to be a pretty good primer for tank warfare. Although my Gulf War tank unit never got into actual combat, a lot of the nuts-and-bolts details of life on a tank and with tankers were fairly accurate. One thing that definitely rang true was the bickering and animosity that can exist between crewmen on the same tank. The rigors of combat aren't solely to blame for this. We have been trained by Band Of Brothers, and other intense filmed stories about soldiers about the bond that grows between fighting men. Talking-head interviews with veterans almost always include a recitation of the love that they grew to feel for their comrades, and that it often surpassed familial levels. And while that is undoubtedly true, the petty squabbling and enmity that often occur between combat soldiers is often omitted. I was on a four-man M1A1 Abrams tank crew. And none of us liked each other very much. On-duty communication was mostly limited to purely business tanker lingo. And off-duty, each of us went somewhere and did our own thing without the others. My tank commander respected my abilities, but he didn't like me personally; those feelings were reciprocated.
I actually got along with our gunner. We would exchange jokes every now and then. But we had nothing in common, and he could be unpredictable. One minute, laughing and joking, the next, irritable and nasty.
And our driver - the less said about him, the better. He was poorly trained, indifferently motivated, and had no interpersonal skills of any kind.
Brad Pitt did fairly well in his role, I think. I don't know if moral ambiguity is easy or difficult to portray on film. But Pitt is good at it. He's had a lot of experience.
Shia LaBeouf was a pleasant surprise. I guess someone finally convinced him to stop being a douche and just act. And he acted well.
The redneck psychopath was a scary addition to the crew as loader. I knew a lot of guys like him when I was in the Army. Hyper-aggressive Southern boys whose only means of expression, as 'Superman's' Jor-El might have put it, was wanton violence and destruction. Guys with no conscience, no restraint, no decency, and a monstrous chip on their shoulders.
It was great to finally get to see the scene with the Tiger tank, portrayed by the last German Tiger tank in working condition anywhere in the world, and the only one ever to appear in a Hollywood film about the war. Authenticity is always appreciated.
SPOILER - One quibble I have about the film is how the crew just seemed to give up when their track was damaged. Now understand, throwing a track in the mud is a tanker's worst nightmare. But if you've got Nazis headed your way and you've got the 30-60 minutes the crew seemed to have before they showed up, you hop off the tank, grab the end-connectors, spare track blocks and the tools, and try to lever the thing back together.
All in all, a pretty good film experience.
Opinions?
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Going to see the judge tonight. I let you know how it goes.
