Nov. 16th, 2019 07:54 pm
Fury (2014) review, with bonus icons!
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thrillingdetectivetalesSo, recently I got into my head that I wanted to come up with some original characters and considered making them WWII tankers. In my research I stumbled across an image of Brad Pitt in a tanker uniform and discovered the 2014 movie Fury.
I watched it, I have some thoughts.
Okay, so, take everything hereafter with the understanding that while I initially watched the movie rent and didn't expect to think much of it, I enjoyed it so much that I ended up buying it after I was finished. (It was, I will say, about half the price of the average movie of similar quality, which was a deciding factor in this action.)
Anyway! On to actual movie thoughts.
My overall judgment is that it fell into the Pacific Rim vein of fun movies with strong aesthetics but not much narrative meat on the bone. There were lots of hints that indicated a larger story, but we didn't really explore any of it. Nor was there a very strong overall goal for the Fury crew to achieve. Kill Nazis, sure, and presumably tarnish the innocence of the baby-faced clerk that gets assigned to be their new assistant driver, but realistically the stakes for the finale aren't even introduced until about 2/3 of the way through the movie and it all escalates incredibly fast from there.
This is not to say I need an incredibly strong narrative, necessarily (see previously mentioned affinity for Pacific Rim), but it would have been nice to have a little bit of a three-act structure to fall back on, even in a piece that's as hugely character driven as Fury is.
I will say that I loved the characters, for the most part, even though they were mostly kind of terrible and didn't necessarily do a whole lot to convey to the audience that they were worth loving/giving a shit about despite their numerous and frequently exhibited flaws. It mostly felt like a bunch of really interesting scenes strung together without much thought as to how or why they were being assembled into a linear narrative.
Despite the low stakes and lack of story, there were enough loose threads to keep me interested from the perspective of transformative works. Part of that is probably my tendency to self-identify a bit too much with characters from a religious/Southern background who are also unsubtly gay for other characters in their source media, all of which I found in spades in Boyd "Bible" Swan. (It also doesn't hurt that he's played by Shia LaBeouf, who I've low-key had a crush on since his Even Stevens days, despite all the strangeness.)
I think the movie did a really good job of capturing the feeling of being in a tank crew in WWII, particularly late WWII, and there was a tremendous amount of historical accuracy—aside from the blatantly non-regulation haircuts—that delighted my inner nerd. Aside from the tanks themselves, the costumes were mostly spot-on, as were all the little character notes like Don "Wardaddy" Collier (aka Brad Pitt) having a sweetheart grip on his pistol.
In that greater vein of the coolest bits of this movie being the stuff that's implied/happens off-screen, there was an interesting note in the Amazon Prime X-Ray trivia thing that mentioned that Brad Pitt is considerably older than a sergeant in his position likely would have been in WWII, which could mean that his character was a career soldier who'd served in WWI. In my mind I've mostly just been hand-waving the ages—since pretty much everyone except baby-face is too old to have filled the roles their characters were in—and pretending that they're all younger versions of themselves, but I found that observation very promising from a fanfiction opportunity perspective. (I imagine I'll be writing at least a little bit, because, as mentioned, Shia LaBeouf plays a sad Southern religious gay, which are four things I love in combination.)
The whole film is a smorgasbord of subtle character acting, and if Pitt & LaBeouf weren't playing their characters as two guys who are more than a little bit in love, they certainly have some wild chemistry. There's a lot of meaningful eye contact—like a lot of meaningful eye contact—up to and including a moment when I would swear that LaBeouf almost goes in for a kiss.
Aside from my considerable emotions about the obvious affection between "Bible" and "Wardaddy," it was absolutely wonderful to see Michael Peña in a WWII film. He's such an underrated actor and watching him rock around in a tanker's onesie and a top-hat as Trini "Gordo" Garcia was a dream. The film also featured Jon Bernthal, playing a man affectionately known as Grady "Coon-Ass" Travis. I didn't care for his character overmuch, though I like Jon Bernthal well enough. Baby-faced Logan Lerman was Private Norman Ellison, who was christened "Machine" sometime in the last forty minutes or so of the film, thus proving that whatever abundance the Fury crew had of vim and vigor, they suffered a concurrent lack of the same in nick-naming creativity.
Overall I'd call the movie something of a marshmallow peep: pretty to look at without much substance on the inside, though I do recommend it for anyone who's looking to have a nice angsty war-movie viewing and potentially walk away full of feelings about sad tank gays, as I have done.
I've also made a handful of Boyd icons because I enjoyed him immensely. I had plans to make others but it didn't shake out and I wanted to put up a review sooner rather than later, so here they are*:
ETA: Added another row of icons because I have a sickness. A Shia LaBeouf-based sickness.
* I didn't think these were too spoiler-y to share, but if y'all disagree let me know and I'll drop them behind the cut, too.
I watched it, I have some thoughts.
Okay, so, take everything hereafter with the understanding that while I initially watched the movie rent and didn't expect to think much of it, I enjoyed it so much that I ended up buying it after I was finished. (It was, I will say, about half the price of the average movie of similar quality, which was a deciding factor in this action.)
Anyway! On to actual movie thoughts.
My overall judgment is that it fell into the Pacific Rim vein of fun movies with strong aesthetics but not much narrative meat on the bone. There were lots of hints that indicated a larger story, but we didn't really explore any of it. Nor was there a very strong overall goal for the Fury crew to achieve. Kill Nazis, sure, and presumably tarnish the innocence of the baby-faced clerk that gets assigned to be their new assistant driver, but realistically the stakes for the finale aren't even introduced until about 2/3 of the way through the movie and it all escalates incredibly fast from there.
This is not to say I need an incredibly strong narrative, necessarily (see previously mentioned affinity for Pacific Rim), but it would have been nice to have a little bit of a three-act structure to fall back on, even in a piece that's as hugely character driven as Fury is.
I will say that I loved the characters, for the most part, even though they were mostly kind of terrible and didn't necessarily do a whole lot to convey to the audience that they were worth loving/giving a shit about despite their numerous and frequently exhibited flaws. It mostly felt like a bunch of really interesting scenes strung together without much thought as to how or why they were being assembled into a linear narrative.
Despite the low stakes and lack of story, there were enough loose threads to keep me interested from the perspective of transformative works. Part of that is probably my tendency to self-identify a bit too much with characters from a religious/Southern background who are also unsubtly gay for other characters in their source media, all of which I found in spades in Boyd "Bible" Swan. (It also doesn't hurt that he's played by Shia LaBeouf, who I've low-key had a crush on since his Even Stevens days, despite all the strangeness.)
I think the movie did a really good job of capturing the feeling of being in a tank crew in WWII, particularly late WWII, and there was a tremendous amount of historical accuracy—aside from the blatantly non-regulation haircuts—that delighted my inner nerd. Aside from the tanks themselves, the costumes were mostly spot-on, as were all the little character notes like Don "Wardaddy" Collier (aka Brad Pitt) having a sweetheart grip on his pistol.
In that greater vein of the coolest bits of this movie being the stuff that's implied/happens off-screen, there was an interesting note in the Amazon Prime X-Ray trivia thing that mentioned that Brad Pitt is considerably older than a sergeant in his position likely would have been in WWII, which could mean that his character was a career soldier who'd served in WWI. In my mind I've mostly just been hand-waving the ages—since pretty much everyone except baby-face is too old to have filled the roles their characters were in—and pretending that they're all younger versions of themselves, but I found that observation very promising from a fanfiction opportunity perspective. (I imagine I'll be writing at least a little bit, because, as mentioned, Shia LaBeouf plays a sad Southern religious gay, which are four things I love in combination.)
The whole film is a smorgasbord of subtle character acting, and if Pitt & LaBeouf weren't playing their characters as two guys who are more than a little bit in love, they certainly have some wild chemistry. There's a lot of meaningful eye contact—like a lot of meaningful eye contact—up to and including a moment when I would swear that LaBeouf almost goes in for a kiss.
Aside from my considerable emotions about the obvious affection between "Bible" and "Wardaddy," it was absolutely wonderful to see Michael Peña in a WWII film. He's such an underrated actor and watching him rock around in a tanker's onesie and a top-hat as Trini "Gordo" Garcia was a dream. The film also featured Jon Bernthal, playing a man affectionately known as Grady "Coon-Ass" Travis. I didn't care for his character overmuch, though I like Jon Bernthal well enough. Baby-faced Logan Lerman was Private Norman Ellison, who was christened "Machine" sometime in the last forty minutes or so of the film, thus proving that whatever abundance the Fury crew had of vim and vigor, they suffered a concurrent lack of the same in nick-naming creativity.
Overall I'd call the movie something of a marshmallow peep: pretty to look at without much substance on the inside, though I do recommend it for anyone who's looking to have a nice angsty war-movie viewing and potentially walk away full of feelings about sad tank gays, as I have done.
I've also made a handful of Boyd icons because I enjoyed him immensely. I had plans to make others but it didn't shake out and I wanted to put up a review sooner rather than later, so here they are*:
ETA: Added another row of icons because I have a sickness. A Shia LaBeouf-based sickness.
* I didn't think these were too spoiler-y to share, but if y'all disagree let me know and I'll drop them behind the cut, too.
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From:no subject
I guess I appreciated the brutality of the invasion, which you don't see in American movies a lot, but that was kind of... blunted by the SS troop at the end looking like daisies. This was the end of a seven-year war for them, why do they look LESS ragged than the troops who've only been in since '41?
Liked the tank scenes. Still not sure why they had to depower the amount of damage the later US tanks could do v. a tiger (at that point in the war). Other than drama, which is rather the point, I guess. The co-ordinating with infantry scene was probably the most interesting part technically speaking.
For an assistant driver, the kid drover very little.
A+ Jason Isaacs, anyway.
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