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    Fury

    Reviewed by
    adamwatchesmovies@

    WARNING: This review is hidden because it reveals the content of the film.
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    There is paradox in making an anti-war film. The paradox is that if you’re telling the audience how awful war is, you don’t want to show everything that you would expect out of a movie about a war. Things like protagonists who survive mission after mission, villains who need to be taken down and are finally defeated at the end of the hour-and-a-half running time, dramatic deaths where people get to give a short speech before life exits their bodies, cool sequences of combat and exciting moments with explosion. They’re kind of essential to a movie because movies are a visual medium and the moment you bring those images to the screen, you’re glorifying combat. “Fury” is one of the rare instances where it can have its cake and eat it too. It is both an exciting war movie and a condemnation of the ugliness that is brought forth by armed conflict. I’ll get to this film working both as a glorious example of combat and as a drama about the animal brought forth by war in a bit. First I want to talk about how brutal this movie is. This is an incredibly violent film. It’s not gory, but it’s violent and very disturbing in its violence. When people die in this film, and there are a lot of people that die, they die horrible deaths. People are set on fire by bombs, have their limbs blown off by high-speed projectiles, get reduced to red pulp by grenades or have chunks of their heads ripped out by shrapnel and bullets. The battlefield these soldiers are fighting on are covered in mud, the people that are fighting are covered with grime and the animosity between the two sides mean that for a lot of these people, a quick death is the best you can hope for. If you’re unlucky you’ll end up bleeding out from a stab wound you received from that guy you were tussling with while desperately reaching for you gun. I found the violence to be shocking, sudden and very unsettling, even more so because it’s often so casual. It’s a war zone. Someone gets shot in the head and crumples over like a rag doll but it’s no big deal because these soldiers have seen it time and time again. There were things that never dawned on me before I watched this movie. Things like the fact that tanks are more than bullet-proof cannons on wheels, they’re also massive vehicles and if you don’t get out of the way fast enough, you’re goingto get crushed. Not run over. Crushed, reduced to paste underneath those treads. That’s a frightening and horrible way to die and something that probably happened to a lot of soldiers. The scene where I noticed this, it wasn’t even an important part of the action. Let's say that you've got a scenario where you're in a dugout and you're shooting at some tanks. The tanks just keep advancing no matter how many bullets hit them and they fire back. Get out of that hole, and you’re going to get shot. Stay inside and you’re going to get crushed. It doesn’t end well either way, but in my opinion, one death was significantlyworse than the other. Other things that I never really thought about that I saw during this movie included the way tanks must have operated in combat. The way not only bullets, but rockets easily bounce off of the armor, the way the people inside have to look through tiny slits and bombard opponents with bullets or the way that these armoured fortresses becomes people’s homes once they’ve been in there long enough were fascinating to me. I found that all of the performances in the film were quite good. I thought the characters were deceptively complicated and it allowed the performers to really shine. Even some of the “bad guys” that at first I thought would just be one-dimensional jerks have moments where they show that they are real people and not just cartoons stuck in a war movie. I thought “Fury” looked great not only because of the special effects, but also because of the accuracy of the sets, the costumes and the vehicles. I even liked some of the simple, but effective stylistic choices. There are some great examples of stylish cinematography, a lot of images you’ve never seen before and some small decisions here and there that really help make some of the battle sequences easy to follow. Some people are going to criticize the end of the movie because a large chunk of it is dedicated to a big, special effects-heavy and impressive sequence. Here’s where I think the movie pulls a brilliant move though. For the majority of the film, we’re seeing combat through the eyes ofthe newcomer to the crew. He is appalled, as we as regular civilians are, at what he sees. The carnage on the battlefield, the way that war changes good men into animals, the senseless death, the degradation of morals, the way people revel in killing each other. As it is explained it to him though, this is what war is. Even though that enemy soldier has a wife and a son, he is going to kill you unless you kill him first. The enemy’s only mission is to kill every single soldier that is not in his army. If you don’t do the same, you are not only going to die, but you’ll probably be indirectly responsible for the death of who knows how many people. Yeah war is going to end eventually, but until then, a lot of people HAVE to die. So what can you do? To stop yourself from going crazy, just embrace your situation. That’s how it is. It’s really easy to say that shooting soldiers that are surrendering is wrong, but until you’ve been in that situation yourself, you don’t know what it’s like. That’s what works about the end here. For the bulk of the movie, you’re the civilian on the outside looking in. But this movie runs 2 hours and 15 minutes. The running time means that eventually you begin associating more with the people in the movie than you do with the “real” world, if only temporarily. Like the men inside the war, your attitude changes and you don’t think of enemy soldiers as people anymore, you see them as threats. The film is more than just a show you’re watching, it’s a way to get yourself into the head of the people on the battlefield. It might only be a temporary thing because you don’t actually pull the trigger and knock down real people, but if only for that second half of the movie, the story changes you."Fury" does not glorify war, not really, but it isn’t a sappy drama on the subject either. It’s an exciting action movie and a moving drama too. There are some images and some ideas brought forth by this film that I will never forget. This is a movie for adults that understands that this is not a subject for kids, and it shouldn’tbe. I have a lot of admiration for “Fury” and I strongly encourage you to go see it on the big screen, where the explosions are going to be loud and shocking. (Theatrical version on the big screen, November 13, 2014)

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    adamwatchesmovies@  15.11.2014 age: 26-35 2,867 reviews

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