When the mayor of Atlanta pleaded with Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman not to burn down the city, Sherman was famously quoted as saying, "War is Hell." Claushwitz went further to say, "Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat the enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed. War is such a dangerous business that mistakes that come from kindness are the very worst." These quotes lay at the heart of Fury, the new WWII tanker movie starring Brad Pitt.
The movie itself is pretty simple. It is April 1945, and the crew of the tank Fury have been fighting in WWII since North Africa. They recently lost their assistant driver who has been replaced by a young recruit Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman) who is in the Army for 8 weeks and has no tank training. It is through Norman's inexperienced eyes the story unfolds. The tank crew is sent to rescue a platoon, liberate a town and finally stop an SS battalion single-handedly with a damaged tank that can't move. We see how in a short time, Norman goes from wide-eyed greenhorn to seasoned veteran and his changing relationships with his crewmates. Brad Pitt plays the tank's commander, Don 'Wardaddy' Collier, who mercilessly instructs Norman on the realities and horrors of combat and war. Michael Peña, John Grantham, and an unrecognizable Shia LaBeouf round out the rest of the crew.
I've said before that the best war movies are anti-war movies at the same time. Like Saving Private Ryan before this, it is an unflinching look at WWII combat and how gruesome it was. If one were to watch the totality of movies about WWII, they have a fairly mild take on the issue. War is glorious and celebrated as we defeat the evil Nazis and Japanese Empire. In fact, I think most people look to WWII as the "good war" because of the fairly black-and-white morality that surrounds it. There are good guys and bad guys and we fought to overcome some of the most evil regimes in history at great cost. It is easy, then, to make films with larger points that sterilize the horror of it, to gloss over the gruesomeness of what war really is. It is easier to imagine war is dirty and sick when the original motives or objectives of the war are unclear at best. But it is hard to imagine the greatest generation stabbing a german soldier in the eye to kill him as is in the opening scene. I don't object to the reasons behind WWII, far from it. War has a time and a place, and should NEVER be entered into lightly. Movies like The Sands of Iwo Jima, To Hell And Back or even Patton do a great disservice to the men who actually served, injured or died fighting to its end. They make war look like a fun, macho picnic where people die cleanly and gloriously, not shivering as they die because their guts have been spilled in the mud. As hard as it is, the real face of war should never be hidden. People should see the horror and the blood and the inhumanity involved because war is such a terrible business and should be avoided if at all possible. The fact that we now can use drones and hit targets thousands of miles way in a precision, almost videogame-like environment makes remembering the cost involved even more significant lest war seem an easy way out of a jam.
There is not a bad performance in this movie. The tone is perfect, veering wildly from the evil that men do to finding humanity in the oddest of ways and places. Aside from its anti-war stance, this movie is not really taking a stand one way or another, just saying how it is. People die quickly, unexpectedly when a moment before the scene was boredom. The fact it takes place in cold, misty and muddy environments just adds to the misery overall. Beauty is fleeting and can be snuffed out in an instant. This is not a happy movie nor is it a pumping action movie, although there are some very exciting scenes. There are also some very visceral scenes of violence that sear into your brain and not easily forgotten. Approach this movie with caution if you don't want to be affected by it. Definitely not one for children. Many movies use the backdrop of WWII to make a greater point about the human spirit, like the upcoming Unbroken, which Pitt's wife Angelina Jolie directed. While these movies certainly have their place, Fury is all about the truism Collier says to Norman: "Ideals are peaceful. History is violent."
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