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Fury is a hard to watch, and deeply disturbing, movie (for multiple reasons - the unflinching and harrowing violence/gore being but one of them), but also one of the best movies I've ever seen. There is no plot to speak of - it's just an in-depth character study of men in battle. Brad Pitt leads a cast of talented actors (all of whom deserve some kind of award for their portrayal) including Shia LeBouef, Michael Pena, Jon Bernthal, and Logan Lerman.
It made me uneasy; at first thrilled and rooting, then ashamed of the same; nervous for the lives of fictitious characters, and so on. For example, there is a scene in the middle of the movie involving our protagonists and a pair of German women in a captured town. The tension has already been ratcheted up and then comes this entire scene playing out with desperation in a "will they or won't they" with hidden motivations including what I can only describe as "consensual rape". All to highlight whose humanity has or hasn't (and how much of either) been lost to war and civilians who take the brunt of nations fighting against each other. I laughed at some of the humor in the scene; was repulsed by whether these women would suffer violent assault; was heart-sick at a story being told about horses; and when finally the scene came to it's grim ending it was relief.
Perhaps it is because I have read so many books/accounts of actual soldiers, and realized though this movie was not based on any real events, horrible things like this happen all through war, regardless of time or place, and everyone you see are just surrogates for real men, women, and children who died horribly.
I have not been in war, but my grandfather's served in WWII. I have heard stories from them. I know vets from then, and from our recent mistakes in the Middle East (one of which suffers PTSD something terrible). I am not a "fan" of war, but neither am I one to shirk from the belief that the human condition is one of violence eternal. Sometimes that is one the personal scale. Sometimes it is among nations. And war is a necessity to keep one's way of life intact. To do that, we much ask our soldiers to commit the unspeakable in our name and for our way of life, often setting them up to suffer such psychic damage (should they live) that they may never fully enjoy what they fought for.
This movie is stark reminder of that.
If you can stomach it, I recommend watching it.
-Brent
"The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war." - Douglas MacArthur
