Fury- A Movie Review

I'll give you my rating first: B (on a typical school letter scale)

Now, I'll confess that I had high hopes for this film. That it did not meet those high expectations is only partly why I give this movie a B rating. Lest you think, "But a B is still above average"...whilst true, you should now that World War II is one of my two favorite time periods in modern history. You should also know that simply having WWII as its subject matter will almost always warrant an A rating from me. All that would remain to be seen is if the A is + or -.

So why would I give Fury what is equivalent to a subpar rating for me? I hope there are no spoilers in what I divulge, but the story takes place within the final two months of the European portion of the war. Some seasoned pros are showing the "newbie" the ropes. Okay, that's the premise.

You can easily denote from this premise that the four veterans would be battle-hardened (to say the least). Watching their behavior (that is not much better than the Germans they are killing) does nothing to endear them to me later when their lives are at risk.

Let me put it in terms of Saving Private Ryan so that I don't spoil anything for you in Fury. We care about the men who are on the special mission to save Pvt. Ryan because we've travelled with them. We see them laugh, fight, cry, and FUBAR their way across Normandy. The only depth we receive from the characters in Fury are some stories about what happened since North Africa as Shia LeBouf works up some well-timed tears.

To be fair, this is most likely a more accurate portrayal of soldiers in the trenches and tanks of war. As much as I want redemption, closure and beauty to be portrayed...some guys are quite simply colossal jerks and there are no excuses for their behavior, no matter how pretty you try to paint it. The depravity of war only enhances and exacerbates our inherent ugliness.

This is a Rated R movie, so do your homework if you're going to take your children. My 16 year old son went with me, but there are a plethora of F-bombs and violent special effects. I actually jumped twice in my seat. As we headed into the theatre, I joked with Noah that we were really there to see the new Nicholas Sparks chick-flick. "But I thought you were the cool mom that takes me to see action films?" he replied.

I do like action films. As I've processed why this movie didn't resonate with me, when most superhero and war films do, I could only point to two things:

1. The story was just too weak to help me engage with the characters, and 

2. As if seeing 4 and 6 year old-ish boys with their families in this film wasn't bad enough, the dad and his six year old son calling out "Ooh", "Aah", "Boom!", "Look at that!" accompanied by laughter and guffawing, had me nauseous within the first 30 minutes. It's the first time I've ever seriously contemplated approaching someone about keeping quiet during a movie. Given their attitude toward the violence being portrayed on the screen, I knew they could have no compunction at verbally berating me, so I remained silent. 

I don't think I've ever been so repulsed by the behavior of other human beings. It was like they were watching a video game instead of an accurate depiction of the horrendous nature of war. That being said, I will watch Fury again...on DVD. Who knows...maybe the absence of  a clueless parent and his violent-son-in-training, the film may prove to be worthy of a bump or two up the ratings scale.