Fury (aka that tank movie with Brad Pitt).Follow

Could I get a TL;DR about whether or not it's worth seeing?

... yes.

I'd go see it. Has Mr. Jolie ever really made a bad movie?

I thought Interview with a Vampire to be pretty bad. Also did not like the two sequels of Oceans Eleven. I heard bad stuff about Mexican and Troy was rather forgettable.

Most of his movies I did enjoy though.

Edited, Oct 20th 2014 5:31pm by TherealLogros

My options are limited

I saw Fury last night. It was "ok". I suppose if you're just looking for tons of violence and gun battles and whatnot, it was a good film (still not "great" IMO). If you're looking for a strong plot, meaningful characters, and any real sense of theme, you should probably skip it. Dunno. It was like a film that could have been very good, but the director (or writers?) just couldn't decide what kind of film to make, or what direction to take the characters, or pretty much anything. So the result is a mix of different ideas and themes sorta jumbled together, while the meat scenes are devoid of any direction (presumably edited out stuff that contradicted other directing choices, or were left out to keep things open, no way to be sure).

It seemed to want very badly to be a "war is hell" type film, but written/directed by people who don't seem to actually understand the human aspects of that theme. It's like they wanted to show the dehumanization of war, but did so in such a ham fisted manner, that it left you with characters that you simply could not relate to. And not in a good "OMG! The war has messed this guy up" way (although there were a couple characters that did fit this somewhat), but in a "this makes no damn sense at all" kind of way. I got the distinct impression that the director originally wanted all the characters to just be vile and mean and randomly violent, but test screenings didn't do well, so they kinda wedged in a "reason these guys are really just unlikely heroes" bit. So there is technically a reason why they're in each battle, but it's never mentioned in the battles themselves, just in setup scenes. So instead of "C'mon guys! We've got to stand our ground to save <insert people who need saving here>!", or any sort of rallying cry at all during the action scenes, you get... well... something else. You have to remember that back during a minor dialogue scene earlier, there was a brief mention of how important this battle is cause it's never mentioned again. I suspect because the director didn't want the characters to be seen as heroic at all (cause, war is hell, right?).

Additionally, while they do get most things right in terms of the action sequences, there are some glaring mistakes. Ok. Maybe not "glaring". They don't have anything happen that couldn't technically happen. Just a lot of things that would be incredibly unlikely to happen the way they did. And this results in our heroesguys doing much better than they should. Not that this isn't a staple of such films, but in this case, it's done in a bit more ridiculous manner. Also, Spoilerevery time one of the crew dies, the entire combat seems to stop long enough for there to be a dramatic moment, which I get, but is still really jarring as well. Oh. Also, someone needs to tell Hollywood that tracer fire and tank rounds don't actually look like laser beams when they wiz by.


Having said all of that. The action sequences were quite good. Costuming was good. Surprisingly, the drama actually got decent. By the end the characters do kinda click (you just have to ignore large chunks of stuff that happened earlier). If they'd started with how the characters end in the final fight, and then worked them backwards with an eye towards solid character development, this would have been a great film. As it was, it was a film that could have been great, but ended out just "ok".

Actually, the fight sequence with the tiger tank (I think it was a tiger) was pretty good. A bit over done, but in a fun way that worked IMO. I got the impression that Fury (their tank) had the upgraded main gun, but not all the tanks in the patrol did. Wasn't looking that hard, but I vaguely recall differences in the gun barrels.



It's still a round though, and wont look like a solid line of red/green/whatever light when viewed from the side. Tracer rounds don't travel anywhere near the speed of light. You will see them move across your field of vision. In this case, there was a scene where it was showing fire going in two directions as viewed from a distance away and from the side. The tracer rounds looked like just solid lines of light, and not rapidly moving balls of light as they should have. It was jarringly unrealistic. I get that Hollywood will often exaggerate effects, but this was just a tad overdone (for my tastes anyway, YMMV).

And there was no explanation at all as to why the anti-tank rounds looked like bright red laser beams either. That was just "odd". In one case, the round even deflected off the side of a tank, and the "beam" deflected. It was just weird.

Could have been having a seizure or something then. Dunno. I just remember watching the scene where they're rolling across the field taking out machine guns and dealing with some anti-tank weapons, and really noticing that it looked like a scene from Star Wars the way the tracer fire was done. Maybe just my perception though. Who knows? It was a minor nit-pick anyway.

Oh. The good news is that Cinepolis finally figured out that if they have you pay when you order, they can actually deliver your food to you before the film starts and not bother you anymore. Yay! In the past, they'd follow a procedure like in a restaurant. They'd take your order. Then they'd show up with your drinks. Then come by with your food (sometimes they did both at once, but usually in two batches, especially if you're with a group). Then, sometime later (usually about 15+ minutes into the feature), they'd show up to get you to pay. Which meant fumbling around checking the total, figuring out tip, etc all while you've got a plate of half eaten food in front of you, and while trying to watch the film.

So I got to watch Fury while gobbling down a burger, fries with honey mustard dipping sauce, and a Stone IPA. So it's all good!

Yeah. Those are awesomesauce! And now that I think about it, that is kinda my peeve. They were making much slower rate of fire weapons have fire effects that did remind me of the Avenger. It's just too fast and too bright. I get why they do this, but it's just one thing that points to a disjoint between the "crazy fun over the top combat" and "gritty reality based WW2 story" themes in the film. There was a lot of that IMO. As I said earlier, if they'd picked one and stuck with it all the way through, I think this could have been a great film. As it is, it's just "ok".