Seasoned German troops completely fail to realise than they can simply go around disabled tank and instead heedlessly attack it from the front where the guns are pointing. Yup. Makes sense.
Most of the seasoned elite troops had been deployed and died on the eastern front. During this point in the timeline these troops would have mostly been new recruits who troops that were demoralised due to impending defeat.
You know what? I'm not a seasoned soldier. Hell I haven't even fired a rifle. And you know what I wouldn't do? Charge directly into a front facing machine gun instead of going around. I think if I was 6 I could have figured that out pretty quick
I always thought that Shia LaBeouf can be a really great actor when he's given adequate material. There are far more mediocre actors working on big films.
It is intensely grim and violent throughout. I think it specifically says something about violence and how solipsistic, death fearing individuals respond to the extreme violence of 'total war' or rather genocidal war. It looks at individual and collective reasoning and justifications for murder as well as the confusion of joy and horror in surviving violent conflicts.
Does anyone know if the set piece at the end was based on actual events? I was frustrated that it was a ridiculous Hollywood idea that an American flag equals invulnerability against all or any odds... this is what annoyed me about Saving Private Ryan as well. Why do the bad guys always have to just run out of doorways and run into open ground to get shot at? Surely the German armies at some stage trained their soldiers to have a little peek around a corner first? Or to stay behind a hill and shoot from cover? It seems like only the Americans have the luxury of using that kind of strategy in these films... or alternatively they can run across open ground without any problems, because the bullets always miss them...
It was based on a real event, but in real-life, the young tank crewman was the only person manning the tank as the rest of the crew were dead, so it was even more over the top in reality.
Spot-on review. Matched my thoughts exactly. Essentially, Fury is worth seeing for the bangs and crashes and mud and tanks. But don't go if you're hoping to take away some profound lesson about war or life. Like the good doctor says, this movie is like a tank: big and impressive on the outside but hollow inside.
The film is well acted, stylish, well directed, realistic & A violent war thriller flick that focuses well on the history & characterisation. (82%) (4/5 stars) (positive)
I agree totally with Mark, despite all the attempts at making it realistic, the final scene is a joke, and, how come it gets dark so quickly? I was hoping for great things for this film but the Americans always have to stick some philosophy in here and there, just like Private Ryan, which is a great 20 minute film, the rest is very poor.
'Whenever it deals with female characters' I just watched it and that scene he describes is the only scene with women?? Its a war film about soldiers in a tank shooting at other men, where is he seeing all these female characters that need development?
What? That scene is the most beautiful scene in the film. The possibility of pretty moments, calm in the midst of storms, and also, very cinematographically, peaople just interacting without being able to properly communicate with words. Also, excellent acting when their unruly buddies come along and the tension is on the table. Everything else is just shallow and unimportant, but this scene is just beautiful, and I don't think women, in general, feel any bad about it.
I might be reading too much into it, but I feel like Fury is definitely an anti-war film. It has the gore and also shows seasoned soldiers as arseholes, which seems anti-war on the surface. But I feel like the whole last line from the soldiers that save him when they say something like: "Your a hero kid". I think it is intended by the character but as a film it is intended to be ironic, that he has survived this horror and brutally murdered other soldiers that are being literally forced by gunpoint to do their job, and now he is supposed to be considered a hero when he is really just a guy that survived hell and seen his new "friends" each brutally die one at a time. ... I might be reading to much into it, but I feel it is very anti war
Watched this last night and really enjoyed it. I absolutely agree that the scene with the two women was utterly superfluous and the film would have been better if it had been cut. Great to see actual tanks (from the Tank Museum in Bovington) being used and surprised to learn that it was shot in the Oxfordshire countryside (and Pinewood).
Just watched Fury then came back for the review. Says so much about the film that the only memorable thing for me from 2014 was the Bickertainment at the end about being not-unimpressed
I've watched Fury several times & I'm not unimpressed by it. Of course, it has many problems. Too much Brad Pitt, though his acting is alright. The scene where he gets the lad to shoot the German in cold blood to toughen him up (as opposed to the scene where 'Angel' executed the Nazi with the busted wing who had been forcing the kids in the town to fight), Shermans charging at the Tiger when Fury's 76mm gun could have taken it on frontally, the scene with the women just seemed chucked in there, the ridiculous final battle against an SS Battalion. For all its flaws, it got a lot of things right. It succeeded in taking the glory out of mechanized warfare (until the OTT ending). It showed the industrial brutality of machinery vs flesh. You could almost smell the burning corpses. It looked amazing & the score was foreboding. I'm not convinced it managed to pull off all of its aims when it came to deeper meanings and I thought it could have done with a bit less Brad & a bit more of the other crew. Norman was a good character & the lad playing him gave a really convincing performance. Overall I'd give it a 6/10. Not bad but with a bit more work on the script it had the potential to be an 8 or 9/10. A missed opportunity.
You're wrong sir. The movie is about the monsters war makes of us all. From the beginning you're all against the character Norman because he won't "man up" and het with the program of war but, the scene that really makes the film and makes you go "oh wait, these guys are all savages" is the living room scene. That's the movie.
Totally agree with the comment about the women, I walked out to go to the toilet so I could stop being frustrated at how the women just were throwing themselves at people who'd just blown up their town. Ridiculous. Enjoyed the rest though,
Simon being kind of a pithy stickler for asking Mark to clarify himself. Mark is right in that the difference is in the nuance of it. When he says "I was not unimpressed by it," it doesn't mean that is synonamous with saying he "was" impressed by it just by virtue of one expression being a double negative for the exact same statement as it's 'non'-double negative form. The nuance is this. Saying he "wasn't unimpressed by it" is like saying that it wasn't exactly bad or poor or terrible but at the same time isn't exactly noteworthy or remarkable as though it was somehow something we had never seen before. He means that for as far as wartime depictions of tank battles go that it was quite explicit with it's use of grit and dirt and mud but that this is the kind of slog we would expect world war two tank battles to be, even if we never have personally actually participated in one, because tank battles have been portrayed enough times in film that it's not exactly something we hadn't ever seen before now is it.
Heard mixed things about this and it does look like a decent action film (I was surprised to find I really liked Ayer's End Of Watch), so will wait for the DVD most likely...just too many good films out these next few weeks - Nightcrawler, Interstellar, Mr Turner, The Babadook, The Drop, What We Do In The Shadows...
its a blast mate, seriously good fun, awesome film. I didn't particularly like end of watch , much preferred this. don't wait for the DVD, this needs to be seen on the big screen
I think what Mark was trying to say was that he found that aspect of the film impressive, but it wasn't enough to compensate for the weaker aspects of the film. He just said it in a really weird way. I don't think it's fair to say that LeBouf was "surprisingly, not bad." I thought he was pretty good. Yeah, he's done some pretty poor work in the Michael Bay films, but I don't think he's a terrible actor, and thought he was quite good in this. As I don't share Mark's endless fascination and perspective with 1970s "gender politics," I didn't so much object to how the female characters were handled, but I thought that they were underwritten and the scene slowed the film down. I don't know if the film is "in love with Brad Pitt" either. Yes, he has the obligatory shirtless scene, but I thought his performance was good and he was part of the ensemble well enough. As for me, I found this solid but kind of unremarkable. The tank angle was somewhat novel, I haven't seen tons of war films which have followed that particular perspective, but I mostly found the storyline itself a little too familiar. The hardened leader, the religious guy, the new guy, the pretty girl who dies, the platoon's last stand, I just felt like it was all stuff I'd seen before. The cinematography was wonderfully bleak and I love Ayers' choice to shoot 35mm, thought the grain and texture were wonderful, and performances were solid, I just felt like I'd seen a lot of this before.
I haven't found the story too familiar? I cant think of any film that depicted the life in a day of a tank team, offhand. Yes perhaps the characters were familiar. Nothing new. But plot wise fairly original. I defo believe MK has a prefixed reaction to BP regardless of the quality of his output. The women in the movie took up enough space. They indicated, to me, 1 - the place trading for sex can have in a hyper-real environment; 2 - the fragility of human life in this environment. I think this compacted a significant tone on the overall movie; indicated the humanity of Logan Lermans character ie. he wasn't an immoral cretin like some of his crew had become - he was so far 'morally driven' which contrasted many of his crew.
gregingram1970 There is only one other serviceable film that depicts a tank crew as intimately, The Beast of War (1988), and it doesn't hold a candle to this. Considering there are 7 billion films about fighter pilots, the Navy, Marines, Special forces, Infantry, etc. I'd say it's high time we tankers got some love, and this film is a love letter to our profession.
Well seeing as Brad Pitt is the main character why is this man so surprised the movie mainly centered around him? Isn’t that the point of being the MAIN character, emphasis on MAIN? Regardless Brad did an amazing job in his role, as did Jon and Shia and the others. This movie had a lot of action but not the crazy insane Fast and Furious kind of action scenes. These scenes felt more visceral and real. You could feel the weight of the decisions they’re making. I think these guys were WAY too invested in Brad Pitt and completely paid the rest of the movie no mind. Because despite him being the MAIN characters all the others the story centered around did amazingly. Their roles were a bit stereotypical and type cast but other than that I found no issue with anything in this movie except Wardaddy guilt tripping his men to die when he says at the beginning he promised he’d keep them alive and literally had a breakdown when he lost one of his men in the beginning..
It was ok, until the end which was poor. Good action scene but 5 guys and a broken tank with guns facing one direction against 300 SS? They would have lasted minutes. I don't care how good of a soldier you are or how brave they were. The Germans would have just got behind the tank and destroyed it.
The thing about Kermode, is he's not going to give you a rating out of 5 stars for you to make up your mind. He tells it how it is, and often films can sit with positives and negatives. Should you go and see it? Well clearly it isn't a terrible film, so how much does the story, cast, director etc interest you?
I follow this channel and I trust him as a critic, just in this case it wasn't anything, it was just non weighted words about a film and I got no general sense whether it was worth going to see or not. A mate of mine and another film buff gave it the thumbs up and said it's worth seeing on the big screen and I will probably go tomorrow,
sulijoo The BBC's archive for the podcasts within iTunes actually goes back quite a ways, especially given how many others don't, but there's still a lot missing.
I can't agree with him, I have seen this film and it is amazing. This film really puts you inside the tanks and makes you kind of feel what the people in the tanks feel. It has a great storyline and you are hooked to the screen as you watch because you get so in to it. The film itself is yes gory but it shows you and makes you feel what war must have been like. It is in no way hollow because it is just amazing and possibly the best movie I have ever seen
This IS a good movie. On REFLECTION of the movies I have watched so far in 2014 - and there have been 3 trips per week since January - this is one of the best of them. By a distance. I prefer to look at this as a 'day in the life' of a tank driver - and - if you care to think about that - life expectancy is not that long. Mark Kermode gets overly pompostuous like his hair has been for too long when referring to this movie and Mr Pitt. Its gruesome; its real life; a sense of panic and brotherhood; an interesting perspective on tank driving during WW2 in Germany. I loved it. Well done Brad. I think MK is jealous of BP hair cos he overlooked the many other positives and I think that is just wrong. 9/10.
I couldn’t disagree with him more. I admit the breakfast scene with the two girls in the middle of the movie. Kind of feels like the movie comes to a halt then but I don’t think the scene should’ve been taken out all together it may be just went on a little long. And I disagree with how he’s saying he’s not portraying female characters correctly. I think to German women that just had their town taken over by the American military and everything that just happened outside would probably react exactly that way. I mean how much can the actors communicate if they’re speaking to different languages? And yeah, I understand that. As far as historical accuracy, there are some things that didn’t belong in that timeline but remember this is a fictional movie, and none of those things took away from the story for me. I think he needs to re-watch the movie if he thinks that the breakfast scene in the middle of the movie was the heart of the movie. When I first watched it, I looked at this tank crew as a family and the new youngest brother in the family was coming in replacing someone that they had just lost . But by the end of the movie, he’s one of them and they except him it’s about against all odds, even though these people are very different people they trust each other, and they’re going to act as a unit against all odds in horrible circumstances. To me, that was the heart of this movie. No, I’m not saying it’s a perfect movie, like I said, I acknowledge that the breakfast scene in the middle kind of feels like the movie comes to a halt at one point, but I still think it’s a fantastic film, and I would never describe fury as “hollow “ .
Kermode, have you dropped the ball... Again? I avoided this at the cinema due to the negatives pointed out by the Good Doctor. But I just caught this TV and thought it was fantastic. Only Kermodian comment I agree with was the 'Brad-fest' element. But the camera does love him.
Bit childish with the coming of age scene.Cant believe that every tank crew was quite so infused with animal savagery.But having never put a tin hat on its just my humble opinion..Six out of ten.
So, is this another "We'll pretend we're anti-war by showing hwo terrible war is, but we're really glorifying it and flag-waving"-type of movie, a la "Saving Private Ryan"?
I wouldn't say so, I found it very draining and grim in it's portrayal of the horror of war. I think it did an excellent job of saying, "look how absolutely awful this situation was and how hard those there had to fight to stay sane."
HerokaVendile Doesn't make it anti-war. Just anti-US troops suffering. During the 1999 Kosova War no American or NATO soldier suffered so much as a scratch (aside from one pilot downed then released). That didn't make it a good war. The only thing you get out of movies like this is a greater desire to keep American (or British) troops from harm, NOT a greater desire to stop wars. Thus the support for Obama's drones.
Vebinz I would disagree, I found the film portrayed the whole situation for EVERYONE there to be horrible. And this film has absolutely sod all to do with drones or "the suffering american", it is about _people_ in a hideous place and time.
HerokaVendile You're not getting what I'm writing. Most of what passes as "anti-war" films are really just "anti-US troops suffering". They rarely address the actual war, or even the civilians, and only concentrate on the US troops. Such obsession over US troop suferring over the actual morality of the war itself it what leads to support for drones and the like.
bathasleftthecave Well then you prove my point, don't you? No concern for the morality of the war, just the safety of your precious troops. Sorry, but if a war is immoral then the troops should not be celebrated.
See I liked Fury, because it was a grim and horrible film about WW2, which does not often have such films about it because it's so important to cultural memory as the last great war and the greatest generation and all that. Even Saving Private Ryan had the soppiest ending in cinema.
Imagine Das Boot where they surface in Scapa Flow, sink the entire British Home Fleet with their deck gun, British 15in shells bounce off their hull and destroyers miss from 50 yards away. But it does have some gore to make it realistic.....
Gosh he likes Double Negatives. Perhaps what he should have said was he wasn't not non-anti-unimpressed with it? Hold on I might need to count these positive and negative overrides to check whether they still equal an 'impressed'!
I thought this was a fantastic movie, the acting was great. I did watch this when I'd had a few too many beers so maybe the explosions did carry it a bit for me... :)
Fury is not a great movie. It is likeable and providing you do not ask too much of the movie you are watching. Quiet entertaining. The problems arise because it is a Brad Pitt movie. With a lesser figure your focus might have been more on the characters and the tale (what much of it their actually is) and then you have the terrible disappointment of the movie becoming just another action film, Arnie style with this crew wiping out hundreds of highy experience, tough German troops who have all just acted like school kids and sat down directly in front of the tanks guns, so that it can fire at them! Absolutely ludicrous. The Germans would have moved around the tank, not walked up to it. They would have used their Panzer fausts (plentiful at that time) or simply scaled the tank and destroyed it as soldiers very experienced in fighting tanks, especially fully stationery ones, were. We see a lone Tiger which happily destroyed all but one of the U.S. tanks at range then decide to get involved in a close range fight in the open with a tank it would happily have destroyed several times over had it simply continued to do what it was so good at. Once again we are asked to believe that a battle weary and experienced Tiger crew would drive out in the open. Knowing that British and U.S. ground attack aircraft would make rapid mince meat out of it the moment it showed its face. Believe me German tank crews were petrified by the allied tank busters even if they didn't actually see any. So no. Fury attracted praise it didn't deserve, but it is a simple shoot 'em up film. Just don't think too hard.
Years later and I am still not over the grotesqueness of this movie. All I saw was a gang of hardened war criminals going about their business. Don´t get me wrong I don´t doubt that there were atrocities committed by all sides, but the films intent of showing a moral greyness fails shockingly. The characters are incredibly selfrighteous ( murdering POWs for having an american coat while having theit tank loaded with loot, being insulted by a tank commander shooting at them with a pistol after they mowed down his bailing out tank crew, the list goes on and on). And I am supposed to root for these guys. Frankly I couldn´t wait for them to finally get killed.
Can not stand Arm Pitt. The only thing he's ever been good in is Inglourious Basterds. He was brilliant in that and I can only think it was done with motion capture and Andy Serkis. Go away Arm Pitt, U think ur transitioning into late-Newman but ur transitioning into late-Burt-Reynolds. Go work on some salad dressing recipes.
"Which one of those words isn't English?"
Quality bit of wittering at the end there ha
:)
I love that their banter at times almost gets acerbic but always seems to end with a smile
Seasoned German troops completely fail to realise than they can simply go around disabled tank and instead heedlessly attack it from the front where the guns are pointing. Yup. Makes sense.
Most of the seasoned elite troops had been deployed and died on the eastern front. During this point in the timeline these troops would have mostly been new recruits who troops that were demoralised due to impending defeat.
You know what? I'm not a seasoned soldier. Hell I haven't even fired a rifle.
And you know what I wouldn't do? Charge directly into a front facing machine gun instead of going around.
I think if I was 6 I could have figured that out pretty quick
@@biggeeves6025 you jackass the tank was on fire. You should have walked into it. You would have
I always thought that Shia LaBeouf can be a really great actor when he's given adequate material. There are far more mediocre actors working on big films.
The combination of Mark and Simon is hilarious. In the best way.
It is intensely grim and violent throughout. I think it specifically says something about violence and how solipsistic, death fearing individuals respond to the extreme violence of 'total war' or rather genocidal war. It looks at individual and collective reasoning and justifications for murder as well as the confusion of joy and horror in surviving violent conflicts.
Does anyone know if the set piece at the end was based on actual events? I was frustrated that it was a ridiculous Hollywood idea that an American flag equals invulnerability against all or any odds... this is what annoyed me about Saving Private Ryan as well. Why do the bad guys always have to just run out of doorways and run into open ground to get shot at? Surely the German armies at some stage trained their soldiers to have a little peek around a corner first? Or to stay behind a hill and shoot from cover? It seems like only the Americans have the luxury of using that kind of strategy in these films... or alternatively they can run across open ground without any problems, because the bullets always miss them...
It was based on a real event, but in real-life, the young tank crewman was the only person manning the tank as the rest of the crew were dead, so it was even more over the top in reality.
I was more impressed by Pitts torso than his hair to be honest...
Spot-on review. Matched my thoughts exactly. Essentially, Fury is worth seeing for the bangs and crashes and mud and tanks. But don't go if you're hoping to take away some profound lesson about war or life. Like the good doctor says, this movie is like a tank: big and impressive on the outside but hollow inside.
The scene inside the German flat completely runs your point into the ground.
@@thatfilmgeekguy except the movie probably would have been better without that scene
The film is well acted, stylish, well directed, realistic & A violent war thriller flick that focuses well on the history & characterisation. (82%) (4/5 stars) (positive)
I agree totally with Mark, despite all the attempts at making it realistic, the final scene is a joke, and, how come it gets dark so quickly? I was hoping for great things for this film but the Americans always have to stick some philosophy in here and there, just like Private Ryan, which is a great 20 minute film, the rest is very poor.
The rest of saving Private Ryan isn't 'very poor' , it's average
'Whenever it deals with female characters' I just watched it and that scene he describes is the only scene with women?? Its a war film about soldiers in a tank shooting at other men, where is he seeing all these female characters that need development?
Reluctantly impressed with certain aspects of it, but it has no depth. I think that summarises Kermode's review.
What? That scene is the most beautiful scene in the film. The possibility of pretty moments, calm in the midst of storms, and also, very cinematographically, peaople just interacting without being able to properly communicate with words. Also, excellent acting when their unruly buddies come along and the tension is on the table.
Everything else is just shallow and unimportant, but this scene is just beautiful, and I don't think women, in general, feel any bad about it.
Bradley Pitts
I might be reading too much into it, but I feel like Fury is definitely an anti-war film. It has the gore and also shows seasoned soldiers as arseholes, which seems anti-war on the surface. But I feel like the whole last line from the soldiers that save him when they say something like: "Your a hero kid". I think it is intended by the character but as a film it is intended to be ironic, that he has survived this horror and brutally murdered other soldiers that are being literally forced by gunpoint to do their job, and now he is supposed to be considered a hero when he is really just a guy that survived hell and seen his new "friends" each brutally die one at a time. ... I might be reading to much into it, but I feel it is very anti war
Its_only_martin I don't think you're reading too much into it. Thats the message I got as well.
Watched this last night and really enjoyed it. I absolutely agree that the scene with the two women was utterly superfluous and the film would have been better if it had been cut.
Great to see actual tanks (from the Tank Museum in Bovington) being used and surprised to learn that it was shot in the Oxfordshire countryside (and Pinewood).
Just watched Fury then came back for the review. Says so much about the film that the only memorable thing for me from 2014 was the Bickertainment at the end about being not-unimpressed
I've watched Fury several times & I'm not unimpressed by it.
Of course, it has many problems. Too much Brad Pitt, though his acting is alright. The scene where he gets the lad to shoot the German in cold blood to toughen him up (as opposed to the scene where 'Angel' executed the Nazi with the busted wing who had been forcing the kids in the town to fight), Shermans charging at the Tiger when Fury's 76mm gun could have taken it on frontally, the scene with the women just seemed chucked in there, the ridiculous final battle against an SS Battalion.
For all its flaws, it got a lot of things right. It succeeded in taking the glory out of mechanized warfare (until the OTT ending). It showed the industrial brutality of machinery vs flesh. You could almost smell the burning corpses. It looked amazing & the score was foreboding. I'm not convinced it managed to pull off all of its aims when it came to deeper meanings and I thought it could have done with a bit less Brad & a bit more of the other crew. Norman was a good character & the lad playing him gave a really convincing performance.
Overall I'd give it a 6/10. Not bad but with a bit more work on the script it had the potential to be an 8 or 9/10. A missed opportunity.
You're wrong sir. The movie is about the monsters war makes of us all. From the beginning you're all against the character Norman because he won't "man up" and het with the program of war but, the scene that really makes the film and makes you go "oh wait, these guys are all savages" is the living room scene. That's the movie.
I disagree. Fury illustrates the confinement, terror, unpredictability and panic of tank life extremely well. In fact much better than 'Lebanon' does.
Totally agree with the comment about the women, I walked out to go to the toilet so I could stop being frustrated at how the women just were throwing themselves at people who'd just blown up their town. Ridiculous. Enjoyed the rest though,
Lt Aldo Raine commands a tank crew...pffff
Simon being kind of a pithy stickler for asking Mark to clarify himself. Mark is right in that the difference is in the nuance of it. When he says "I was not unimpressed by it," it doesn't mean that is synonamous with saying he "was" impressed by it just by virtue of one expression being a double negative for the exact same statement as it's 'non'-double negative form. The nuance is this. Saying he "wasn't unimpressed by it" is like saying that it wasn't exactly bad or poor or terrible but at the same time isn't exactly noteworthy or remarkable as though it was somehow something we had never seen before. He means that for as far as wartime depictions of tank battles go that it was quite explicit with it's use of grit and dirt and mud but that this is the kind of slog we would expect world war two tank battles to be, even if we never have personally actually participated in one, because tank battles have been portrayed enough times in film that it's not exactly something we hadn't ever seen before now is it.
Way to call out that double negative! Great vid as always.
Tanks fire shells not missiles unless it's a Sherman calliope
Heard mixed things about this and it does look like a decent action film (I was surprised to find I really liked Ayer's End Of Watch), so will wait for the DVD most likely...just too many good films out these next few weeks - Nightcrawler, Interstellar, Mr Turner, The Babadook, The Drop, What We Do In The Shadows...
its a blast mate, seriously good fun, awesome film. I didn't particularly like end of watch , much preferred this. don't wait for the DVD, this needs to be seen on the big screen
I thought Mark would love Pitt's hair, considering he made a video about it a while back. :p
The comments about the scene with the woman are interesting cause all of the German woman who worked on the film thought it was brilliant.
I think what Mark was trying to say was that he found that aspect of the film impressive, but it wasn't enough to compensate for the weaker aspects of the film. He just said it in a really weird way. I don't think it's fair to say that LeBouf was "surprisingly, not bad." I thought he was pretty good. Yeah, he's done some pretty poor work in the Michael Bay films, but I don't think he's a terrible actor, and thought he was quite good in this. As I don't share Mark's endless fascination and perspective with 1970s "gender politics," I didn't so much object to how the female characters were handled, but I thought that they were underwritten and the scene slowed the film down. I don't know if the film is "in love with Brad Pitt" either. Yes, he has the obligatory shirtless scene, but I thought his performance was good and he was part of the ensemble well enough.
As for me, I found this solid but kind of unremarkable. The tank angle was somewhat novel, I haven't seen tons of war films which have followed that particular perspective, but I mostly found the storyline itself a little too familiar. The hardened leader, the religious guy, the new guy, the pretty girl who dies, the platoon's last stand, I just felt like it was all stuff I'd seen before. The cinematography was wonderfully bleak and I love Ayers' choice to shoot 35mm, thought the grain and texture were wonderful, and performances were solid, I just felt like I'd seen a lot of this before.
I haven't found the story too familiar? I cant think of any film that depicted the life in a day of a tank team, offhand. Yes perhaps the characters were familiar. Nothing new. But plot wise fairly original. I defo believe MK has a prefixed reaction to BP regardless of the quality of his output.
The women in the movie took up enough space. They indicated, to me, 1 - the place trading for sex can have in a hyper-real environment; 2 - the fragility of human life in this environment. I think this compacted a significant tone on the overall movie; indicated the humanity of Logan Lermans character ie. he wasn't an immoral cretin like some of his crew had become - he was so far 'morally driven' which contrasted many of his crew.
gregingram1970 There is only one other serviceable film that depicts a tank crew as intimately, The Beast of War (1988), and it doesn't hold a candle to this.
Considering there are 7 billion films about fighter pilots, the Navy, Marines, Special forces, Infantry, etc. I'd say it's high time we tankers got some love, and this film is a love letter to our profession.
I've heard Lebanon is also an incredibly gripping tank-based war flick.
I like Mark....but hate double negatives. Good work Mayo !
It's litotes, litotes are fine ;)
Harsh Times is the David Ayer movie everyone should see.
Well seeing as Brad Pitt is the main character why is this man so surprised the movie mainly centered around him? Isn’t that the point of being the MAIN character, emphasis on MAIN? Regardless Brad did an amazing job in his role, as did Jon and Shia and the others. This movie had a lot of action but not the crazy insane Fast and Furious kind of action scenes. These scenes felt more visceral and real. You could feel the weight of the decisions they’re making. I think these guys were WAY too invested in Brad Pitt and completely paid the rest of the movie no mind. Because despite him being the MAIN characters all the others the story centered around did amazingly. Their roles were a bit stereotypical and type cast but other than that I found no issue with anything in this movie except Wardaddy guilt tripping his men to die when he says at the beginning he promised he’d keep them alive and literally had a breakdown when he lost one of his men in the beginning..
Hollywood makes movies for two reasons. The first is to entertain and the second is to make money. Can't wait to see your review of "Roger Rabbit."
interestingly many of kermode's audience are interested in hairstyles.
edit: I typed that before he mentioned brad pitt's hair.
It was ok, until the end which was poor. Good action scene but 5 guys and a broken tank with guns facing one direction against 300 SS? They would have lasted minutes. I don't care how good of a soldier you are or how brave they were. The Germans would have just got behind the tank and destroyed it.
Simon and Mark are so cute at the end :)
Should have been a movie about the Marvel character Sgt Fury
What the hell was that
Well is good is it bad, will I go see it
Where is the clarity.
The thing about Kermode, is he's not going to give you a rating out of 5 stars for you to make up your mind. He tells it how it is, and often films can sit with positives and negatives. Should you go and see it? Well clearly it isn't a terrible film, so how much does the story, cast, director etc interest you?
Jye Sherwell
that marks out of 5 thing is something i wish he did, oftentimes after his review you just dont know where you stand.
I follow this channel and I trust him as a critic, just in this case it wasn't anything, it was just non weighted words about a film and I got no general sense whether it was worth going to see or not.
A mate of mine and another film buff gave it the thumbs up and said it's worth seeing on the big screen and I will probably go tomorrow,
sulijoo
The BBC's archive for the podcasts within iTunes actually goes back quite a ways, especially given how many others don't, but there's still a lot missing.
*****
I concur it was only OK and it could have been much better. I didn't regret going to see it. But I wouldn't bother re-watching the Bluray.
I can't agree with him, I have seen this film and it is amazing.
This film really puts you inside the tanks and makes you kind of feel what the people in the tanks feel.
It has a great storyline and you are hooked to the screen as you watch because you get so in to it. The film itself is yes gory but it shows you and makes you feel what war must have been like. It is in no way hollow because it is just amazing and possibly the best movie I have ever seen
your right not sure what kermode was watching but the movie was seriously good
Not a bad film until the last 15 minutes when it completely destroyed any depth it could have had with the ridiculous Hollywood ending
Nothing will ever impress this man. Fact.
This IS a good movie. On REFLECTION of the movies I have watched so far in 2014 - and there have been 3 trips per week since January - this is one of the best of them. By a distance. I prefer to look at this as a 'day in the life' of a tank driver - and - if you care to think about that - life expectancy is not that long. Mark Kermode gets overly pompostuous like his hair has been for too long when referring to this movie and Mr Pitt. Its gruesome; its real life; a sense of panic and brotherhood; an interesting perspective on tank driving during WW2 in Germany. I loved it. Well done Brad. I think MK is jealous of BP hair cos he overlooked the many other positives and I think that is just wrong. 9/10.
I couldn’t disagree with him more. I admit the breakfast scene with the two girls in the middle of the movie. Kind of feels like the movie comes to a halt then but I don’t think the scene should’ve been taken out all together it may be just went on a little long. And I disagree with how he’s saying he’s not portraying female characters correctly. I think to German women that just had their town taken over by the American military and everything that just happened outside would probably react exactly that way.
I mean how much can the actors communicate if they’re speaking to different languages?
And yeah, I understand that. As far as historical accuracy, there are some things that didn’t belong in that timeline but remember this is a fictional movie, and none of those things took away from the story for me.
I think he needs to re-watch the movie if he thinks that the breakfast scene in the middle of the movie was the heart of the movie. When I first watched it, I looked at this tank crew as a family and the new youngest brother in the family was coming in replacing someone that they had just lost . But by the end of the movie, he’s one of them and they except him it’s about against all odds, even though these people are very different people they trust each other, and they’re going to act as a unit against all odds in horrible circumstances. To me, that was the heart of this movie.
No, I’m not saying it’s a perfect movie, like I said, I acknowledge that the breakfast scene in the middle kind of feels like the movie comes to a halt at one point, but I still think it’s a fantastic film, and I would never describe fury as “hollow “ .
Kermode, have you dropped the ball... Again? I avoided this at the cinema due to the negatives pointed out by the Good Doctor. But I just caught this TV and thought it was fantastic. Only Kermodian comment I agree with was the 'Brad-fest' element. But the camera does love him.
Bit childish with the coming of age scene.Cant believe that every tank crew was quite so infused with animal savagery.But having never put a tin hat on its just my humble opinion..Six out of ten.
So, is this another "We'll pretend we're anti-war by showing hwo terrible war is, but we're really glorifying it and flag-waving"-type of movie, a la "Saving Private Ryan"?
I wouldn't say so, I found it very draining and grim in it's portrayal of the horror of war. I think it did an excellent job of saying, "look how absolutely awful this situation was and how hard those there had to fight to stay sane."
HerokaVendile
Doesn't make it anti-war. Just anti-US troops suffering.
During the 1999 Kosova War no American or NATO soldier suffered so much as a scratch (aside from one pilot downed then released). That didn't make it a good war.
The only thing you get out of movies like this is a greater desire to keep American (or British) troops from harm, NOT a greater desire to stop wars.
Thus the support for Obama's drones.
Vebinz I would disagree, I found the film portrayed the whole situation for EVERYONE there to be horrible.
And this film has absolutely sod all to do with drones or "the suffering american", it is about _people_ in a hideous place and time.
HerokaVendile
You're not getting what I'm writing.
Most of what passes as "anti-war" films are really just "anti-US troops suffering". They rarely address the actual war, or even the civilians, and only concentrate on the US troops.
Such obsession over US troop suferring over the actual morality of the war itself it what leads to support for drones and the like.
bathasleftthecave
Well then you prove my point, don't you? No concern for the morality of the war, just the safety of your precious troops.
Sorry, but if a war is immoral then the troops should not be celebrated.
New suit? No.
See I liked Fury, because it was a grim and horrible film about WW2, which does not often have such films about it because it's so important to cultural memory as the last great war and the greatest generation and all that. Even Saving Private Ryan had the soppiest ending in cinema.
+Limubi1 I kind of liked most of it but the ending is horrible and pretty much ruins the film for me.
Ive been watching a lot of these recently and I wonder if he actually likes films I haven't seen him give a good review
Yes, he likes films.
I agree with Mark, but I found it worse. So cliche in pretty much all aspects. Shia LeBouf was great, but Id rather watch Come and See (1985) any day.
Love kermode and Mayo:)
Is this basically Das Boot, in a tank?
Imagine Das Boot where they surface in Scapa Flow, sink the entire British Home Fleet with their deck gun, British 15in shells bounce off their hull and destroyers miss from 50 yards away. But it does have some gore to make it realistic.....
What is he on? I saw the film. Agreed Brad Pitt movie with gore
Gosh he likes Double Negatives. Perhaps what he should have said was he wasn't not non-anti-unimpressed with it? Hold on I might need to count these positive and negative overrides to check whether they still equal an 'impressed'!
I thought this was a fantastic movie, the acting was great. I did watch this when I'd had a few too many beers so maybe the explosions did carry it a bit for me... :)
@6:21 “why don’t you just speak in english”
Fury is not a great movie. It is likeable and providing you do not ask too much of the movie you are watching. Quiet entertaining. The problems arise because it is a Brad Pitt movie. With a lesser figure your focus might have been more on the characters and the tale (what much of it their actually is) and then you have the terrible disappointment of the movie becoming just another action film, Arnie style with this crew wiping out hundreds of highy experience, tough German troops who have all just acted like school kids and sat down directly in front of the tanks guns, so that it can fire at them! Absolutely ludicrous. The Germans would have moved around the tank, not walked up to it. They would have used their Panzer fausts (plentiful at that time) or simply scaled the tank and destroyed it as soldiers very experienced in fighting tanks, especially fully stationery ones, were. We see a lone Tiger which happily destroyed all but one of the U.S. tanks at range then decide to get involved in a close range fight in the open with a tank it would happily have destroyed several times over had it simply continued to do what it was so good at. Once again we are asked to believe that a battle weary and experienced Tiger crew would drive out in the open. Knowing that British and U.S. ground attack aircraft would make rapid mince meat out of it the moment it showed its face. Believe me German tank crews were petrified by the allied tank busters even if they didn't actually see any. So no. Fury attracted praise it didn't deserve, but it is a simple shoot 'em up film. Just don't think too hard.
Years later and I am still not over the grotesqueness of this movie. All I saw was a gang of hardened war criminals going about their business.
Don´t get me wrong I don´t doubt that there were atrocities committed by all sides, but the films intent of showing a moral greyness fails shockingly. The characters are incredibly selfrighteous ( murdering POWs for having an american coat while having theit tank loaded with loot, being insulted by a tank commander shooting at them with a pistol after they mowed down his bailing out tank crew, the list goes on and on). And I am supposed to root for these guys. Frankly I couldn´t wait for them to finally get killed.
Can not stand Arm Pitt. The only thing he's ever been good in is Inglourious Basterds. He was brilliant in that and I can only think it was done with motion capture and Andy Serkis. Go away Arm Pitt, U think ur transitioning into late-Newman but ur transitioning into late-Burt-Reynolds. Go work on some salad dressing recipes.
deathfromabove77 You forgot "Killing Them Softly" :|
deathfromabove77 You forgot "Killing Them Softly" :|
Can we please NOT talk in double negatives? It's just pretentious and annoying. Kermode sometimes tries too hard. lol
"Fury" is a terrible movie. Every scene reeks of trying too hard to be taken seriously.
Awful film.