Fury [4K UHD + Blu-ray]

Fury" is one of the best movies made by Hollywood in a long long time.And notice that I'm not saying "best war movies..." butBest movies.The horror of the final months of World War II in Germany has never been depicted this well, and I only wish some more of the men who had been there were still around to discuss it, now that this movie was with us. One of those men was my father.But first, a bit about the authenticity.One of the worst things about many of the later World War II movies (most silly among them, "Patton") is that they got little or nothing right. American tank soldiers fought inside Sherman tanks, not those later American tanks (like the "Pattons" utilized in the movie "Patton"). And the Shermans were decent tanks -- except against the best of the Nazi armor. In order to do a decent job with the movie, "Fury" had to locate real Shermans (and a real German Tiger tank) that could be used. Otherwise, everything else would have been lost to the lack of authenticity, which is what the movie had to have.But more than that, the movie had to be authentic to the reality of the men who ended their war in Germany (and Austria and Czechslovakia, the last three countries to be taken -- and that's the correct word, not the Cold War "liberated" -- from the hands of the Nazi leadership) in May 1945. For the soldiers on the job with the U.S. forces during those months, the job was killing "Krauts", "Heinies..." etc. And the job of the "Krauts" was killing Americans (and British, Canadian, and French invaders coming from the West; or Russians from the East). Both sides got very good at their jobs."Fury" takes that job seriously, depicting the job by portraying the five-man crew of one Sherman tank during that last month before Adolf Hitler's suicide and the final surrender of the remnants of the Nazi empire. It the simplest way, "Fury" is another "War Movie" (caps necessary), a buddy movies, and more. A tank crew is led by Brad Pitt (as US Army S/Sgt. Don "Wardaddy" Collier. As the movie begins, the crew consists of Shia LaBeouf as Boyd "Bible" Swan, Michael Peña as Cpl. Trini "Gordo" Garcia, and Jon Bernthal as Pfc. Grady "Coon-Ass" Travis. In the first nasty battle portrayed in the film, they have lost one of their crew, "Red." They receive a young replacement, Logan Lerman playing Pvt. Norman "Ellison (who doesn't get his non de guerre -- Machine" -- until nearly the end of the story). The tank platoon starts the movie with ten tanks, and by the end there is one. The film depicts how that comes about. The portrayal of the men doing the tank work should earn any of them at least an Oscar nomination, and their lives together inside that bucket of steel is portrayed in the claustrophobic horror that was actually experienced by U.S. tankers during those years -- and especially those final months. All that said, "Fury" might just have been another one of those war movies where the "kid"learns to be a good soldier thanks to the work of the "old man." But this isn't "Sand of Iwo Jima" or any of a dozen of the sanitized bedtime stories we were told as children in the 1950s and 1960s using Hollywood propaganda that began in the 1940s.In order to do his job, the "kid" has to be taught to be a killer, and he resists. Trained for a mere eight weeks to be a clerk typist, "Logan" is snatched from a replacement truck and ordered to be the machine gunner on "Fury." When he protests that his only military skill is typing "60 words a minute," Wardaddy begins the replacement's new training, with the help of the rest of the family who work inside "Fury." Norman has to become a killer to be a good worker and a fellow soldier, so that by the time the other men bestow on him his war name -- "Machine" -- he has learned his trade and is doing it well. "Idealism is peaceful," Brad Pitt's character tells Norman at one point. "History is violence." And that violence is depicted as almost never before in an American film (and rarely in others, one of which comes to mind -- the Russian "Stalingrad"... but that's another discussion for another time).By the time of that final battle scene, all the stages have been set, and all the cliches and pieties of previous American war movies have been obliterated or at least severely damaged. Wardaddy's life and fate are not out of "Sand of Iwo Jima" or any of a dozen other war myths that come to mind with alittle thought.This is important.One of the most pernicious bits of the historiography from the final months of World War II was the claim that the Americans were fighting "old men and kids" after the German Army "lost" its remaining major reserves in the Battle of the Bulge and Nordwind. Left out of that story is the fact that those "kids", some as young as 14 and 15, were fanatical Nazis who had been trained from the day they entered school under Hitler's versions of reality. As a result, they were as deadly as the men who had raped their way across Poland, France, and Russia a few years earlier.I have a hunch that "Fury" will get good reviews from the remaining men (and few women) who are still around who actually lived the combat of those months at the "end" of World War II in both Europe and "The Pacific." Sadly, I won't get to have those conversations with my parents, because both -- both combat veterans -- are long dead.My father ended his war after fighting through Germany into Austria with the 44th Infantry Division, one of the 80 or so U.S. divisions that never made it to Hollywood. He came home with one desire -- to begin that family he and my mother had promised each other when they got married a few months before Pearl Harbor. By April 1945, he was in the Army in Germany and she was in the Army (Army Nurse Corps) on Okinawa. The year 1945 was different for each of millions of men and women across the planet, but one of the jokes in our family was that they really understood the meaning of SNAFU. My mother enlisted in the Army Nurse Corps because the enlistment office promised her that she'd be there -- in Europe -- to patch up my Dad if he was hurt. Naturally, as soon as the paperwork was in, she was sent to the other side of the planet.But they did get together by December 1945, after the G.I. protests in "The Pacific" demanding that "Bring the Boys Home." (They didn't mention the girls; there weren't many of them).And so they got their dreams, and in September 1946 I was the first of the four children they had, keeping that promise from early 1941.But there were mysteries we never could solve.My father came home with a Bronze Star, a Combat Infantry Badge, and a "yearbook" from his regiment. My mother came home with a little mimeographed booklet of home addresses for all the men and women who had served on the island with her field hospital. Every Christmas, our home was filled with Christmas cards from all over, most of them the men and women Mom and Dad had "served" with.How does that relate to "Fury"?Like most boys growing up during the John Wayne 1950s, I wanted the stories. We read "Sergeant Rock" comics and say all those movies about World War II (which got less and less real as the Cold War decade went onward).No matter how many times I asked my Dad how he got his Bronze Star, the only answer he ever gave was "I got lost one night and I got lucky..."My mother, remembering her war, had nightmares until they took her over the edge. But since "PTSD" wasn't well known then -- and the American Dream said that women hadn't been in combat anyway -- her healing was more difficult than Dad's. He worked, his post "service" service being the U.S. Post Office.But the questions remained, and over the years they only grew. What were those wars in 1945 like?Well, little by little Hollywood is catching up with the facts that were reported early after the war, then suppressed in the lies of the Cold War.And one of the best things about the movie "Fury" is that it gets those who are paying attention back to that real war that American (and British, Canadian, and French) soldiers actually had to fight after they entered Der Vaterland in early 1945, following the termination of "The Bulge".The one thing that was certain, the Germans were not being "liberated" as the French and Belgians had been. The Germans were fighting -- virtually all of them -- and dying fanatically for the Reich. And as "Fury" depicts, those who had second thoughts were lynched by their own fellow citizens.That's why, as our fathers did explain, in very few words, every major city in Germany had to be reduced to rubble. By air and artillery, and finally house to house. Not all the Germans in 1945 were Nazis supporting Hitler's last festungs. Just the majority -- male and female, adults and "children."Fury does as good a job showing what those final weeks of the war in Europe were. As good as "were like" can offer. Because if we were paying attention, our parents taught us that war IS -- and not "like" anything else. Hollywood can only do so much, once Hollywood decides to try and tell a story honestly.I wish my Dad were still around so we could watch this movie and talk about it together, but he was buried 19 years ago alongside the brewery in Newark, New Jersey. My Mom had died ten years before that, never fully recovering from the nightmares she brought home with her from Okinawa. Medicated, she wrote hundreds of notes on slips of paper about he lives, by the end believing the Jesus was speaking to her -- between bouts of writing about the broken men, women and children she used her nursing skills for between April and September 1945.So now, Hollywood has brought us "Fury." It's about tankers, specifically the 2nd U.S, Armored Division fighting through Germany in April 1945. By then, Europe was a killing field from "East" (where the Russians were heading into Berlin) to the "West," where my father and a million young men like him were heading through Germany.One of the best things about "Fury" is that the men who play the tankers in it trained for their acting roles in two ways. They listened to the men who were still alive (not many) from the Second Armored Division. And then they got some "basic training" from Navy SEALS to give them a bit of a sense of what some of it was "like." I think they did a decent job in telling a brutal story that doesn't hedge on the realities those men faced in those days.As the movie notes at the beginning, most of the U.S. tankers in Europe were doomed men. The German armor was better than the U.S. tanks, and so, as "Fury" shows, Sherman tanks fighting German Tiger tanks were as a serious -- and suicidal -- disadvantage. There are dozens of scenes so authentic in the movie as to make you cringe, and the dialogue is as close to "reality" as possible. Men at war use the "F" word a lot, and in all its variations. None of the dialogue is cleaned up in "Fury" for some politically correct later day.There are a dozen scenes that make the movie memorable, and at least eight actors who deserve to be recognized for their work.But perhaps the final scene does as much as could be imagined.The lone survivor (I know, spoiler alert) is the kid' Norman, who at first refused to be a killer, as the war demanded."You're a hero buddy. You know that?" the soldiers who put him in the ambulance say as the scene ends the movie. And I have a hunch that most of the men who came home from those brutal months knew that a "Hero" was just a young many who had gotten lost one night and "got lucky."

Fury is a retelling of the story of the Alamo. Saving Private Ryan has met its match by this WWII film. The story of this WWII film was wonderfully imagined. To bad Ayer was not nominated for an Oscar for his cinematic efforts. So much about this movie deserves written attention. Difficult it is to pear down the many thoughts and emotions this movie elicits.As of this movie as of other period movies I am always amazed at how an art director, I think it is the art director who, finds equipment, automobiles, clothes, and other things used in scenes that convey real authenticity of a particular period. Too often reviews are written focusing on what appears on screen without mention of production that goes on behind the camera. That production-work makes what appears on screen work well. Production value of this film is deserving of high praise. Yet writing about this movie is hard to do without mention of what occurs in front of the camera.Of course Brad Pitt does another excellent job at acting. He was/is that top Sargent. One dimensional his character is not. Layers of the character were dramatized well when each one individually needed to surface. As well, those layers work in combination towards shaping the character of the conveyed character. One particular scene stands out.Inside the German woman's apartment. Having had cleaned himself of war grime, looking fresh, top Sargent and Noman sit at a dinning room table, waiting to be served food, very domesticated. Calmly reading a newspaper, top Sargent sits at the head of the table presiding over an unlikely formation of an instantly formed family only made possible by conditions of war. All of a sudden in comes a barbaric presence tarnishing any semblance of domestic tranquility. Other crew members drunkenly loud enter the apartment. Top Sargent quietly accepts his rowdy crew members who behave inappropriately. Norman tortuously contains his resentment at their rowdy and crude presence. Top Sargent wisely allows these crew members to misbehave but keeps a vigilant eye on them. After all these are his men with whom he has fought many battles, and together they have witnessed devastating horror characteristic of war. Having shared such horrific conditions has allowed strong bonds to be formed among them. In this scene Pitt's character conveys silent authority, both domestic and militarily. Yet when he has to he can switch on barbaric authority, which authority his men understand, for it matches their own barbaric presence. Top Sargent demonstrates he is the alpha male of the bunch.Another screen presence deserving mention is the actor who plays the character, Norman. To illustrate his acting ability, take the scene when tank and crew roll out of camp heading towards another military objective. Norman had just moments before arrived in camp. Having been trained to be a military clerk, he now sits inside a tank for his first time saddled with responsibility as assistant driver. Not long before this moment his muses the military had made a mistake. His newly found comrades assure him no mistake has been made. Its just throwing cannon fodder at the enemy, and it's the roll of the dice whether the newbie survives or not. It's part of military logic in such circumstances. Here it is Norman's first experience of battle with a battle harden tank crew, and he is hardly prepared to go into battle let alone going into battle as a tank crew member. As the tank rolls out of camp, Norman sits in the lower portion of the tank, his head sticking out, from a distance looking quite comical, I think. Camera at mid-range close-up focuses on this face. His is a face given to the expression of foreboding terror, portrayed convincingly well.Another time the actor playing the character Norman does well at acting. The time after the tank crew had undergone shelling in the town. It was in this town he had met the German young woman, and with whom he might have had sex. As to whether that happened is not quite clear to me. As to whether sex did happen or not happen makes no difference. A scene of them together in the apartment sitting at the table does show a bound had formed between them, a bond formed but still very innocent. After the shelling on the town, now on the road again, leaving the town, his thoughts are unspoken but obviously of her. By his meeting her and by his being with her it gave him a sense of quiet, pleasant normalcy, a respite from the deafening loudness and insanity of war. But now he sits on top of the moving tank, lost in quiet contemplation. Moments before he witnessed a brief but lethal incident of devastatingly eruptive force. Now Norma's face conveys a deeply felt sadness, a sadness having him at the border of numbness, a numbness felt with the thought of the irreparable damage he witnessed. This emotion is convincingly portrayed by the actor. The two scenes about which I have written are very important moments, scenes, at which time qualities of character are conveyed.This has me wondering how a casting director, producer, and director -- whoever -- would audition actors for a part such as this requiring silent conveyance of emotion.An accurately made observation of all the primary actors in this movie would state each did an excellent job. Each portrays a character, a common men, who when placed in abnormally dangerous circumstances, who when faced by overwhelming forces greatly and lethally at odds by his presence, who then steps up to the occasion to face the challenge, and who must introspectively reach within himself to derive uncommon strength of character towards achievement of something astoundingly remarkable although it may mean his losing his life.This not a movie about heroics. It's about duty and integrity. It's belief in fulfilling the purpose of something greater than oneself. It's about the futility of protracted war when fighting on is absurdly irrational and is evidence of maddening stupidity.Enough said. Besides who really will read this review?

The picture quality on this 4K transfer is incredible. One of the best I've seen. Had a little problem with the order originally, (the disc was not in the envelope) but the customer service team refunded the purchase so I could try again. They did NOT disappoint. This movie was well worth the headaches. Thank you!!

Arrived quickly and as described

If you know, you know. This was a good movie, but I HAVE to deduct a star for the fact that the NAME of the actual TANK(1-3) was far more appreciate and meaningful than "Fury" is. The create name change is a stroke of disrespect to the commander and the crews.The story is wonderful, and the honor of the elements very close to the real. Close enough to give me chills. Knowing the full history (as we are aware, anyway), "In The Mood" had nothing to do with Fury. They weren't mad. They didn't face their mission and take down the Tigers with Fury. The did it because they were in the mood for war. Think... "Oh, I'm in the mood to go wash my car this Saturday" and then it gets the best spa-day treatment of its existence, buffing wheel to clay bar. That sort of "mood". Do it right, do it tight, do it now.Still worth a watch. But please... honor our fallen. Names have power.

love the movie