Fury: The War Film You Never Knew You Wanted

Fury is a tank movie!

No... wait a second. I don't mean Fury tanked. I mean, Fury is literally a movie about a tank gang in WWII. And as far back as I can remember, we've never had a war film so well informed by the linear nature afforded us when we watch a group of five guys rolling through Germany in one tank for two hours.

My usual criticism of war films doesn't apply to this one... because there's never a moment of confusion about who we're supposed to pay attention to or care about. Fury is war. But it's war as we should witness it on film... gruesome, but linear. Characters and their choices make sense and don't seem to come out of some random order. Strategies make sense and, yes, horrible things happen... but they happen for the right reasons. This is war and it ain't pretty. And Fury understands that.

David Ayer made an exceedingly good movie... I think his first actually good one. And I'm surprised and overwhelmed by his growth since... End of Watch only a few years back. Where that flick felt sloppy at best, this one feels well concentrated and threateningly tense.

Brad Pitt is just damn likable as Wardaddy. He may be playing something similar to his role in Inglorious Bastards, but this time he feels far more grounded. Shia LaBeouf managed to not annoy me. And that's saying a lot. Logan Lerman is passable with moments of great subtle quality. And Michael Peña and Jon Bernthal managed to keep me entertained... But at the end of the day, I don't know if this movie is as much about the cast as it is about the concept.

I say it's about damn time we got a movie about a tank squad. And fortunately, Fury is a damn good example of what that should be.

Shell Shocked By Lone Survivor

I've been very explicit about my feeling on war films in the past.

But somehow it felt as though, watching Lone Survivor, Peter Berg and his crew had managed to eschew many of those key problems the genre tends to coddle. 1. Relationships are often poorly defined... The four guys clearly understand each other here (and not just them, but their team back at base seems individually well defined and in many ways well humanized). 2. Big action often feels too big and loses the viewers in sloppy construction... Lone Survivor has one of the greatest shootout sequences I've seen in film period. And even as the second half wanes, the memory of how those early sequences went down gives enough drama to propel the film to its final moments. 3. False representations of another people usually abound... This was based on a true story. And given the mistakes they allow to be shown by the US Navy, I tend to believe the Afghan sequences are riddled with truths as well. Sure one side of this thing is just pure crazy people, but there are plenty of others who believe in the value of life and will do all they can to protect it.

It's no surprise to me this film managed to get nominated for Sound Design and Sound Mixing at this years Oscars. And, honestly, I would automatically say they should win those awards if Gravity weren't involved in those respective categories. Even so, I think Lone Survivor's got a pretty damn good shot of taking home it's technical awards. That gunfight was just too technically proficient to ignore.

The actors were all pretty alright. No surprise there weren't any acting awards for this film. But that doesn't mean they didn't accomplish everything the screenplay asked of them. I did find the castings of Taylor Kitsch and Emile Hirsch to be a little strange, mostly because they seem too similar on camera to not be playing brothers. And Mark Wahlberg and Ben Foster gave exactly the kinds of performances I've come to expect from each of them... not overwhelming, not underwhelming, pretty much just there. Eric Bana had a nearly throw away part, but managed to do just enough to keep it interesting.

Overall, I still give this movie a high grade. As far as war films go, Lone Survivor is among the best of the genre.