Fury (2014)

FURY  (2014)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: David Ayer
    Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman,
    Michael Peña, Jon Bernthal, Jim Parrack
You might think Brad Pitt would've killed enough Nazis in Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds", but no. In "Fury" he's at it again, as a battle-weary tank commander blasting his way through Germany in April 1945. Brad and his crew have been fighting the war since North Africa, and they've reached a point where they're not just burned out, they're psychotic. They live to kill. That's their existence. That's what they do. That's all they do. It's a harsh, brutal movie, devoid of the great war/greatest generation heroics we're used to in films about World War Two. There's no "Saving Private Ryan" here. Just slaughter. And more slaughter. And more after that. Which might make it a more accurate depiction of the war. I don't know. It's at least a much less romanticized one. The storytelling is minimal. The carnage is gruesome. There's no comic relief, no catharsis, certainly no glory, and no escape. If "Apocalypse Now" in 1979 was a strung-out vision of war as hallucination, "Fury" is more like an unrelieved nightmare. Enter at your own risk.