Fury Rocked! Brad Pitt leads an exceptional cast in this very tight, brutal war film. The action scenes are just amazing, and the way they were filmed were fantastic. Taking what would normally be very wide is brought down to make you really feel the small scale of being inside a tank, yet it's equally exciting and violent. It's just very inventive and really excels at what many times before may have been a very tough perspective for a WWII film. This might be my favorite war film in quite some time. Pitt is just awesome and is even more badass here than Basterds. But the rest of cast also is really top notch, including LeBeouf who almost makes you forget all the crap he's done recently. I think one of the best scenes involves the breakfast table with the entire group (a simple yet very uneasy scene showing that while they're brothers inside the tank, outside they are very very different.) Final shot is just ridiculous.

My only real gripe is I found the lighting group fucked up (There are scenes where it just gets dark and then goes light again multiple times in a couple of scenes which I found kind of distracting)

A to A+ for now and my favorite film of the Fall so far.

That's great to hear. Im really looking forward to it.

As the Second World War comes to a violent close, an exhausted and haunted U.S. Army sergeant (Brad Pitt) and the devout men under his command ride through Germany in their Sherman, the apt word "fury" painted on its barrel. Into their closely guarded, combat-forged fold comes a fresh-faced typist (Logan Lerman) unprepared for the claustrophobic environment and uncomfortable around violence; his coming-of-age as a soldier is the heart of the film Fury, which largely consists of scenes of the men traveling, scenes of the men acting rowdy, and abrupt eruptions of carnage, fire, and return fire. Where this picture excels is atmosphere and world building. The despairing, filthy, unstable depiction of on-the-ground existence in 1945 Germany is vivid and hard to turn away from. The performances are fine, too. Pitt ultimately just puts forth a dialed-down version of what he did in Inglourious Basterds, yet is still engaging, and Lerman is fine as the almost angelic private who undergoes one trial by fire after another. The character's arc is hardly revelatory, but he is not as bland as he sounds on paper. As the other (rather thinly developed) members of the Fury crew, Michael Peña is charismatic and Shia LaBeouf quietly soulful. Then there is Jon Bernthal, who is clearly doing a great deal of heavy lifting as an actor, awash as he is in macho Southern bluster and related tics, but the character is a hard-to-endure boor for whom I never felt any genuine sympathy.

Despite the top-notch quality of the production and the able cast, Fury falls short in certain respects. A third-act confrontation between the five-man American crew and hundreds of Nazis, while a well-crafted set piece in and of itself, plays as far-fetched and overwrought. It is as if the picture is compensating for its earlier embrace of an episodic structure and a more slowly burning type of unease. Earlier, there is also an extremely uncomfortable sequence finding the Lerman and Pitt characters (and later their compatriots) invading the apartment of two German women, one a teenage girl. Complicated questions of rape versus consensual sex during wartime (and the plight of women in general) are raised here as one of the soldiers "sweetly" beds a person he held at gunpoint a few minutes prior. Such questions, however, are treated in a jocular and superficial fashion as they are swept under the rug, and the highly questionable behavior is clearly not intended to negatively redefine our perception of the men and their band-of-brothers camaraderie.

C+

Christ, I hated Jon Bernthal's character in this. I sense they were going for this beneath-the-anger-and-the-grit-he-is-a-solid-dude vibe, particularly with the scene where he tells Logan Lerman's character he is a good man apropos of nothing, but I could never get beyond the repulsion. What an animal.

I think Bernthal gives off a creepy vibe no matter who he plays. Its probably amplified when playing such a character.

I couldn't disagree more on Pitt. He is easily the weakest part of the Inglorious Basterds, not his fault but the role itself did not live up to what the trailers said. I think this is Pitt's best performance since Babel.

An often riveting, superbly made WWII film showing both the bloody viscera of war and the camaraderie between soldiers. Brad Pitt leads a solid ensemble, although I actually found Shia LaBeouf best in show here (a nice surprise after all his antics). B+

Agree - Pitt was the weakest link in IB (which I guess isn't saying all that much seeing that everything about that film is brilliant) but still.

I think that, like Lindsay Lohan pre-2010, people forget that Shia is a decent actor.

I have not forgotten!

Like an elephant, you never forget.

It has its flaws, but for the most part I found this riveting, exciting and incredibly well-acted. It actually felt very short despite its 2+ hour running time and I attribute that to the stunning action sequences that really put you i the center of the war that's unfolding. People have been mixed on Brad Pitt's performance based on what I've seen - count me as a part of the group who thought he was absolutely FANTASTIC. It's one of his most soulful and effective performances. Shia LaBeouf is also a standout in a supporting role and Logan Lerman is great at showcasing his character's loss of innocence. Despite being far-fetched I actually found the ending very effective and heartbreaking, and it tied together the film very well. This isn't as fantastic as End of Watch but it is still well worth seeing. B+

By the way, while I did love aspects of the movie I absolutely HATED that breakfast scene after they raid the German village. While I understood its point (Pitt's character seeking some sense of normalcy amongst everything), it felt so heavy-handed and somewhat creepy in context, and it didn't ring true to me at all. I hated this whole sequence so much my grade was going to be a notch lower, but the final act won me over.

I love the breakfast scene, best in the whole film. Though my major issue is the film takes place over 3-4 days. It's tough to really justify the development between the characters outside of Lerman and Pitt. But as said before I really enjoy the inside the tank vs. outside the tank relationships they developed. I think it was the only real way to justify it.

It's not horrible, sometimes Fury is very interesting, but ultimately it just drags on and on. Cutting a minute or two here and there would have helped the pacing tremendously. The breakfast scene sums up the entire movie for me. It is an interesting idea to start with, turns a little creepy with the "not-rape", then gets severely uncomfortable. And even though it enlightened us to who these people were outside the tank, I feel the entire scene was only there to get a cheap emotional reaction from the girls death moments later. Not impressed, moving on.

Fury

An intense, macho, grim, and patriotic World War II actioner centering on a battalion of tanks. Brad Pitt, always enjoyable to watch, basically playing a less comic version of Lt. Aldo Raine, is great once again here. The action sequences are well constructed and it comes thick and fast (especially the intense 4 vs. 1 tank battle). The movie feels much shorter than it is, probably because it's such a packed feast of war. Jon Bernthal, however vile, excels with his performance. Michael Pena is the weak link of the pack. Shia pretty much goes along unnoticed, and the new kid just didn't feel right (although I appreciated the realistic out-of-water angle they tried to convey) as he changed (almost in an instant) to someone that thinks killing Nazis is the "best job he's ever had".

Good, solid war film with an appreciation to an under-appreciated division.

B+

Very solid war film. The standouts are easily Shia, Lerman, and Bernthal IMO. Pitt is good too, but I thought their characters were more interesting.

I really liked how this movie didn't shy away from the violence, especially in the tank battle scenes and I felt for the characters towards the big finale. I can understand why some hate the part where they hold up at the house, but I actually didn't mind it.

While it did go on for a bit too long I couldn't wait to see how it would end. The acting from Lerman, Pitt, and Bernthal is excellent in that scene too.

Bernthal's character being described as "interesting" is certainly interesting in itself.

One of those film characters where you just know he has fucked a pig or two in his day.

One of the best movies of the year. My only (minor) gripe was that I wished for more character development for Pena and Shia. The action scenes are intense and amazingly shot. And the breakfast scene had me on the edge of my seat like no other scene in 2014 (well maybe next to the Whiplash finale).

You're pretty on the nose here but overall I liked it more.

It was pretty good. Very well-made from a technical standpoint and it was entertaining. But outside of Lerman's character the main characters were mostly so unlikable. Especially Bernthal's character. What a piece of shit. I felt no remorse for him and was hoping he'd bite it. The unlikable characters bring it down. That breakfast scene with the two women was pretty appalling. I'd give it a B+.