"Ideals are peaceful, history is violent", says Brad Pitt's grizzled war hero Sgt. Wardaddy. Well, yeah, so are David Ayer movies. The writer/director had made his bones showing the machismo-laden camaraderie of the boys in blue, hitting a creative peak with last year's urban street drama, End of Watch. So it's not really much of a surprise to take the same formula and present it on a much larger canvas with Fury, an endlessly thrilling and jagged edged look at brothers-in-arms fighting the good fight in WWII. It's not the most thoughtful film examination of war we've ever seen, but Ayer sticks to his strengths and gives us one of the most entertaining war movies in recent years.
Those who jump on Pitt's performance as merely him taking another crack at Inglourious Basterds' Aldo Raine aren't paying enough attention. Wardaddy's battle-weary stare and adrenaline-fueled philosophy bares greater resemblance to his Achilles role in Troy. Fury, which is also the name of the Sherman tank that would become home to a five-man crew, begins in 1945 in the waning days of the war. But as Wardaddy says, plenty more people will have to die before it's truly over, and after losing one of his men in a recent battle (his face literally splattered on the tank floor) he's more wary than ever. So he's less than pleased when fresh-faced army clerk Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman) arrives as the new assistant tank driver. Norman knows nothing about war, he's been trained to type 60 wpm and little else, and fitting into such a tight-knit crew won't be easy. There's no reason for the other members of the team: gunner Boyd Swan (Shia LaBeouf), loader Grady Travis (Jon Bernthal), and driver Trini Garcia (Michael Pena), to put their lives in Norman's hands. One weak link can break the whole chain. 
Ayer's script doesn't reveal much in the way of character details, allowing room for them to be defined by actions rather than words. Wardaddy is a tough man who understands the realities of war. It means killing, pure and simple, and he immediately puts Norman through a "trial by fire" forcing him to kill a German prisoner. The other guys only occasionally stray from familiar archetypes but Ayer colors them in with just enough bravado and vulnerability. Swan is the team's man of faith and Norman's reluctant confidante; Travis is a southern redneck and team troublemaker; Garcia is the alcoholic with an unpredictable mood. We see each of these combustible traits play out during an extended scene, basically an interlude from the grim violence, in which Wardaddy and Norman shack up with a couple of German women after occupying their town. Played almost like a horror, or like something Quentin Tarantino would have written, what begins to look like a tense hostage situation calms into a potential romance, only to have the rest of the tank crew arrive and stir the pot. The threat of sexual violence hangs in the air heavy as death; old tensions arise amongst the group, especially between Travis and Wardaddy. It's a great scene that feels like it came from a totally different film, but Ayer is using it to explore the pointlessness and inevitability of death during wartime, and the effect it has on more than just soldiers. 
But a rumination like that is few and far between. Ayer puts the bulk of his attention on the action, the chaos of battle and the sheer power of these hulking weapons of destruction. He almost glorifies it in a way, bullets whizzing by like blaster fire from a Star Wars stormtrooper. It's a little weird at first and almost takes you out of the moment but it works, and Ayer isn't afraid to show the terrible impact these high-powered shells can do to a human body. This is what Ayer specializes in; rugged, brawny violence that is fascinating even at its most disturbing. Considering how authentic his police dramas tended to be it's no surprise Fury looks great, from the uniforms down to the rusty tank treads. 
What Ayer doesn't do quite enough of is show the deteriorating effects of being stuck in such a claustrophobic weapon of death. We see glimmers of it in the aforementioned interlude but other than Pitt's Wardaddy the other characters are sketchily drawn. It's good to see LaBeouf, all mustachioed and worn, playing a tougher character than we're used to seeing. Bernthal and Pena are solid but underutilized, while Lerman really shines as the inexperienced soldier clearly out of his depth. He's not a wimp, which is how the character could have come off if played differently. Of course this is Pitt's movie, and while his Wardaddy uses an economy of words we understand who he is right away. The war has forged him into a harsher man, forcing him to do things he knows are necessary but wishes they weren't. In quiet moments we see glimpses of the man he could have been without the years of fighting. Pitt has played a lot of tough guys lately (don't forget his excellent performance in Killing Them Softly) and always brings a little something different each time. Fury is a thrill ride first and foremost, ending with the kind of big Hollywood brouhaha with big guns, Nazis getting cut down, and grand gestures of American heroism. So yes, history is pretty violent, but also makes for one heck of a movie.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
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