Brad’s experienced ‘bow-gunner’ (actually, he’d be the radio operator, a skilled job – operating the bow machine-gun is very much his secondary role) has been gorily killed and when they get back to their base, a fresh-faced ‘green’ young soldier is allocated to take his place.Īt which unpromising point we de-camp to war movie cliché central ( spoiler warning!). The film opens in the aftermath of a tank battle. Brad Pitt is a old-timer sergeant – ‘Wardaddy’ – in command of a Sherman tank and a crew of hard-bitten veterans who have been fighting together since the North Africa campaign in 1942 and have made it mostly unscathed from Normandy to the bitter end. Of course, it isn’t as straightforward as that and they are still coming across pockets of fanatical resistance, mostly from the SS and groups of politically indoctrinated Hitler Youth. It’s the very end of the war and the US Army are deep inside Nazi Germany, supposedly mopping up the last remnants of the Wehrmacht. The plot of ‘Fury’ is fairly straightforward. But it was released on DVD and to iTunes a couple of weeks ago and I downloaded it, mostly because I was hoping it was actually a bit better than I’d thought it was the first time I saw it, or maybe that it had somehow ‘matured’ a little in the months since I first watched it.
The first time time was at the Kensington Odeon, on a romantic date-night with Mary (I know, I know – at least I took her to Byron Burger afterwards).