The trouble with "Fury" is that while stocking up on all the little details, Ayer has failed to provide much of a narrative for them to hang upon. The film may remind some viewers of the kind of thing that one might have seen on the bottom half of a double-bill in 1943—the storyline is trite and unsurprising, the dialogue is almost always just a little too on-the-nose, and the climactic standoff against the approaching Nazi forces feels too contrived for its own good. In those aforementioned B movies, that wasn't such a problem because they usually clocked out at 80 minutes or so and moved quickly enough so that viewers usually didn't notice such flaws. "Fury," on the other hand, clocks in at 134 minutes and it makes you feel every one of them in ponderous detail. (The sequence with the German women starts off nicely enough but goes on forever before finally arriving at its inevitable payoff.) Speaking of ponderous, the film is, between Steven Price's oppressive score and the cacophony of combat, so noisy that if there was an Oscar given for Most Sound, it would be the clear front-runner.
On the acting front, Brad Pitt is good—of course, he is almost always good—but never quite finds a way of approaching his character that doesn't call to mind his indelible performance as Aldo Raine in "Inglourious Basterds." Likewise, his co-stars turn in decent-enough performances (though LaBeouf's attempts to grizzle himself up via darkened teeth and an especially unfortunate mustache may inspire a few bad laughs early on), but the characters are so paper-thin and devoid of any shading beyond their one approved character trait that they aren't able to do much of anything with them to make them live or breathe. Since we have not been given any particular reason to care about these particular characters, other than the fact that they are not Nazis, the final conflict and the personal sacrifices they make wind up having precious little dramatic impact.
"Fury" isn't so much a bad movie as it is a fairly unnecessary one. From a technical standpoint, it is occasionally quite impressive and fans of the WWII genre as a whole might find it to be of some interest, though those with weaker constitutions may want to give it a second thought considering all the blood and guts on display. From a dramatic and emotional perspective, however, it just sort of lumbers along without ever generating a real sense of interest in what is happening on the scene. If only Ayer had spent a little less time on the physical aspects of this project and given a little more thought to the story, characters and dialogue, he might have been able to truly do "Fury" honor instead of giving viewers just another war potboiler.
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