Fury:

• Does not know what it wants to be?
• Fury is a movie which lacks a moral center.
• The ending is horribly unrealistic, but that is not its problem.
• Fury’s protagonists are very rapey
• Fury presents a hollow propagandistic war movie which lacks a core message
• If it has any message it is that manliness is defined by ugly cruelty
• Fury treats warcrimes very lightly
• It presents horrible things in movie language without condemnation
• Fury presents a morally ambiguous message in at best an accidental manner and at worst a sloppy manner
• Apocalypse Now and other films show the brutality of war and the growing darkness in man while not leaving your confused about what it is trying to communicate
• Hacksaw Ridge presents an unflinching view of the brutality of war while still presenting an inspiring message
• Fury shows the brutality of war and leaves you uncertain if it is celebrating these or condemning them, but seems to lean towards the former.
• The protagonists arc is one that leads from moral to bloodthirsty in a non-squiter fashion
• At first I thought it was going to provide a fresh take on a WWII film on the western front, and it does have impressive moments, especially early on.
• The turning point is when Brad Pitt’s character forces the protagonist to murder a POW and never addresses the moral ambiguity of this.
• It presents Brad Pitt as a morally ambiguous character but shows little actually moral acts, only competence.
• Fury teaches that competence is the only true morality
• I am unsure if Fury actually attempted to explore deep topics, or if it only stumbled into that territory in the attempt to make a gritty warfilm. Leaning on the nihlism of its times.
• Assuming that Fury attempted to explore its deeper topics intentially, it lacks the skill to do so, or perhaps even a knowledge of what it really wants to say about them.
• When Fury ends, one is left wondering what we are meant to think of its characters, but can do no more but conclude they are of poor quality and amoral.
• Should a movie show only moral characters and protagonists? No. But it must use the language of cinema to communicate its own. We are left to decide if the morality it presents is to our liking. But a movie that does not know what morality it wishes to communicate is unanchored and adrift. It thus leaves its audience confused or has wasted it its time. Because without a morality it has no message, and movie without a message is: but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and Fury, Signifying nothing.