Fury

Actors:  Brad Pitt, Logan Lerman, Shia LaBeouf, Michael Peña, Jon Bernthal

Rating: 9 out of 10, A Brad Pitt vehicle set in the last days of World War 2 with Pitt as a tank commander fighting his way across the remnants of the 3rd Reich.  He and the rest of his veteran crew take on a fresh-faced newcomer, Logan Lerman, to replace a dead comrade.  The movie boasts some truly amazing battle scenes where some obvious effort went into realism.  The movie is more about the loss of humanity of the veteran crew (all excellent actors) caused by years of war.  You see Pitt trying to hang onto the last vestiges of his own humanity when he sees himself reflected back in Lerman’s reactions.  Despite their fragile existence living on the edge of barely retained sanity, fighting together establishes a bond that excuses their descent to a certain degree.  A really well done war movie, brutal to the extreme, but so is war.  I spent my entire career in light infantry and didn’t work a lot with tanks (they referred to us as “crunchies”).  Tankers were a strange, fatalistic breed which the movie does a great job of capturing.  Infantrymen have a healthy respect for tankers, probably dating back to the initial training where they have a sixty ton, armored beast come straight at you and do a couple pivot steers directly on top of your position.  A change of underwear is usually required afterwards.

MVP:  Pitt as Wardaddy balancing brutality and humanity