Fury, aka Brad Pitt in a Tank, may be the most intense war movie yet experienced in a theater. Imagine the D-Day opening of Saving Private Ryan for two-plus hours. Writer-director David Ayer is a master of intensity, and Fury is his current magnum opus. Pitt’s Don “Wardaddy” Collier is the tank commander of “Fury,” a Sherman tank manned by Bible (Shia LeBeouf, who is surprisingly effective as the Bible-verse spouting artillery gunner), Gordo (Michael Pena) and Coon-Ass (Shane Bernthal, late of AMC’s “The Walking Dead”). After their bowman is killed, fresh-faced Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman) joins the crew’s deadly push to Berlin. War is harrowing; many a war movie has recreated that fact for modern audiences. Fury laughs at those film’s combat and raises them brutally, viciously and relentlessly. The only way you can be sure the Americans are the heroes is because they are worse than the Germans, who die in bloody, explosive droves. Even the downtime Wardaddy and Norman spend in an apartment with two lovely German frauleins is wrecked through the tension added by Bible, a drunk Gordo and a rapey Coon-Ass, who naturally hails from Georgia. The exhausting (in a good way) Fury may recount your grandfather’s war, but it’s not your grandfather’s war movie.
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