The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies review

       Given the critical and commercial success of the original “Lord of Rings” films and it's lasting cultural relevance that culminated in 2004 when “Return of the King” took home the best picture Oscar, I don't think it's a controversial statement to say that Peter Jackson's return to Middle Earth with this needlessly drawn-out Hobbit trilogy has been something of a thudding disappointment. Sure, these prequels have sold plenty of tickets and kept the popcorn industry afloat but even their most ardent defenders would probably agree that there has been a significant and noticeable drop in quality. Shot in a faster frame-rate to smooth out the performance of the 3D graphics and cartoonish CGI, the Hobbit films have been far more interested in testing new technologies and cashing in on recent nostalgia then gracefully or even faithfully adapting the (comparatively shorter) J.R.R. Tolkien novel.
With “Battle of the Five Armies” I found my self finally defeated by my disappointments and  expectations and passively willing to experience this conclusion as a theme park ride rather than a story that I could possibly be engaged in, and actually, once set in that frame of mind, this movie breezed by rather inoffensively. Still, there's hardly any story speak of as it's only intention is to wrap everything up and because of the added content and tangential plot byways the movie gets lost in from time to time, a severer lack of point of view and purpose keeps this installment from transcending the tech-demo action-schlock that Jackson has apparently settled for.
After the dragon Smaug is quickly and anti-climatically destroyed by the peoples of Lake Town the humans are caught in an awkward position when they they ask to borrow some of the newly available treasure to rebuild their burning village and the Dwarves' fearless leader Thorin (Richard Armitage) refuses to share the wealth, now taking up his mantel as the new king of the mountain. The wood elves feel like they deserve a piece too since they did their part in helping the Dwarves reach Smaug's cave, and just as the three armies begin to duke it out for the booty the same Orcs who have  been perusing the heroes since the beginning of the journey come back to finish what they started.
Along side the battle set-pieces that dominate the picture there exists a number of cameo plots, such as Gandalf (Ian McKellen) escaping near death after getting kidnapped by a not-so-mysterious evil force who's planning on making his big comeback, as well as a narratively inert love-triangle between the warrior elf Legolas (Orlando Bloom), the wood elf Taurial (Evangeline Lilly) and Kili (Aiden Turner), a young Dwarve who frankly doesn't have a shot. And in all of this, Bilbo (Martin Freeman), the titular Hobbit, is nearly sidelined and drown out of the film, serving almost no functional purpose.
There are faint ghosts of Tolkein's themes regarding greed and the petty but complicated nature of war and global economics that hums in the background of the spectacle but “Battle of the Five Armies” never settles on one place, one character, or one situation long enough to let anything substantive break through the bells and whistles. On a technical level everything moves along through the nonsense just sufficient to entertain but the the film's slap-dash plotting and heavy reliance on digital trickery kept me from truly believing in this world or caring about the people in it, and after the last three years of enduring this labored mess of an epic I desperately wish Peter Jackson would just go back to making-low budget horror films with puppets.

Grade: C-

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Dec-2014

Exodus: Gods and Kings review

         If Hollywood knew what they were doing, Bible stories would be the next major source for untapped IPs. They’re ripe with special effects potential and simplistic, Campbellian hero’s journey narratives, and not only will they draw in big crowds in the flyover states but if they keep it Old Testament they could even play well abroad. “Exodus: Gods and Kings” is Riddley’s Scott’s adaptation of the famous story of Moses and unlike Darren Aronofsky’s reinterpretation of “Noah” from earlier this year, this film in perfect step with the biblical text in terms of major plot details and the overall message of building trust in God, but rather than then the parable function it serves in the bible as a morality tale, Scott is far more interested in its cinematic function as a setting for swords and sandals spectacle, and maybe that’s not entirely a bad thing.
The first third of the movie teases a “Prince of Egypt” like tension between Moses (Christian Bale) before he becomes the self-identified revolutionary of the Hebrews and his adopted brother Ramses II (Joel Edgerton) before he becomes the Pharaoh. Having been raised as Egyptian royalty, Moses slowly learns through the oppressed peoples he visits on a business trip that he’s actually one of them, which then causes his existential collapse and his eventual exile from the kingdom. After wandering the desert for a bit, Moses makes a new life for himself when he marries and becomes a sheep herder, and all seems well until his newly acquainted Hebrew God asks him to return to Egypt to confront the Pharaoh and free the slaves.
Throughout the picture there’s a constant war between the spiritual and philosophic concerns of the content and the overbearing aesthetics and grandiosity of the production. The brother-against-brother storyline isn't properly milked for its dramatic potential as we’re initially told it’s going to be. Instead, midway through, Moses and Ramses are full-on enemies and that’s pretty much that.  There’s a small but significant thematic thread dealing with Moses’ increasingly taxing relationship with the elusive Biblical God, and every so often those concerns are dealt with in a semi-thoughtful and humanistic way; first when Moses is abruptly asked to leave his family to save his people, and then later as God instructs him sit and watch the Egyptians he grew up with tortured and killed by a host of terrifying plagues.
          The scenes depicting Moses’ struggle with his faith is about the only relatable thing here as the majority of the film feels and looks like a Las Vegas production, bathed in gold-tinted color-corrected lighting schemes, and spotlighting  a cast of Caucasian actors cheaply bronzed to look more ethnic , wearing bejeweled accessories and thick drag-queen eyeliner. Not helping this is a series of distracting and smirk-inducing casting choices with equally bizarre performances, including John Turturro as Moses and Ramses’ king father, Sigourney Weaver as their queen mother, who, with the exception of one scene, is seemingly only there to walk in and out of rooms, and Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul as a crazy-eyed Hebrew slave who has looks as if he had a bad month and wandered on set without any discernible direction.
         You can always expect a level of technical craft when it comes to a Riddley Scott production and you certainly get that here.  The sets are lavish, the cinematography is atmospheric and the special effects sequences such as the plagues and famed parting of the Red Sea, visually captures your attention. But despite Scott’s minimal attempt at humanizing this tale, a large gilded heap of camp buries the story elements and turns this overlong  epic into a theatrical Circ de Sole performance, and like a well-lit show at the Luxor, it has its entertainment value even if it lacks artistic credibility.

Grade: C-

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Dec-2014

Horrible Bosses 2 review

         After the surprise success of “The Hangover,” Hollywood hastily responded with a few high-concept, men-behaving-badly comedies to cash in on the trend. 2011’s “Horrible Bosses,” while not a laugh-a- minute classic by any means, was one of the better copycats.  Though the plot was merely serviceable,  it was at least highlighted by a few uncharacteristic performances from the likes of Kevin Spacey doing his gleefully-mean “Swimming with Sharks” thing, a bald and bug-eyed Colin Farrell, enjoying a break from being the heartthrob, and Jennifer Aniston being completely and unapologetically filthy. The film also reminded us of the comedic prowess of Jamie Foxx, who, after his Oscar success, was scrambling to find his footing again (and has yet to stabilize), and it successfully introduced Charlie Day, of FX’s “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” to the big screen.

           “Horrible Bosses 2,” however, continues to prove that comedy sequels usually can’t deliver the oftentimes incalculable chemistry of the first, which isn’t to say that the proceeding film--a little sitcom-ish and sloppy in its execution--was all that effective or original to begin with.  Here, the leading trio of Jason Bateman as the straight-man, Jason Sudeikis as the Vince Vaughn-esque, man-child player, and Charlie Day as the expressive over-reactor, never perform as naturally or as effortlessly as did the first time. Instead, their interactions appear forced and tired, the screenplay is thoughtlessly slapped together, and the movie’s exertion to stimulate laughs becomes increasingly unfunny as the plot lumbers from incident to incident.

           This time around the boys try to make it as their own bosses, creating and mass-marketing a Sky-Mall ready bathroom device called the Shower Buddy.  After accepting a shady deal with a larger cooperation to help fund and sell their product, new boss Bert Hansen (Christoph Waltz) and his petulant son Rex (Chris Pine) steal most of the profit for themselves, as well as the rights to their invention. This then, or course, leads the three dim-wits to go back to their criminal scheming, as they try to enact a complicated and illogical plan to fake the kidnapping of Bert Hansen’s son, using the ransom to buy back their company.

          With our leads now visibly bored and ineffectually improving their way through the entire film, the movie’s comedic success is thrust upon the efforts of the supporting cast, but the screenplay’s 1+?=comedy approach gives none of these actors anything substantial or funny to work with. Barely in the movie, Waltz is totally wasted and serves as nothing but a tedious mechanism for the majority of the film. Aniston returns as the nympho-dentist but is now stripped from the comedic place of power and irony that made her performance in the first film vaguely clever and is instead reduced to the butt of a sexist, male fantasy joke.  Jamie Foxx is clearly still having fun playing the criminal with a heart of gold but he too is chained to a messy script that gives his character a lack of believable motivation.  Chris Pine ends up with the best lines in the movie and the funniest stuff to do here but as game as he is, even he can’t keep this boat from sinking.

          Nobody asked for a “Horrible Bosses 2”, really, so nobody should be surprised that it basically sucks. Evenly-lit and comprised of mostly mid-shots and close-ups, the movie lacks just as much ambition visually as it does narratively. And neither of these problems would be particularly damning if the film could at least deliver the laughs, but, minus Chris Pine doing some entertaining sleaze and a too-little-late gag involving a chain-link fence, sadly, it does not.

Grade: D

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Dec-2014

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Pt.1 review

         Truth be told, I have never been as sold on this Hunger Games stuff as much as the general zeitgeist demands.  I don’t really have any interest in reading the books and though I don’t specifically hate anything about the films, they've never grabbed my attention, mostly because I can’t see anything past their base influences and trope-y plot conceits. But what I do appreciate about this franchise, and more specifically this last film, Mockingjay Pt. 1 (of two, because Hollywood), is that they try to discuss ideas of governmental power, class divisions, ideologies, and political revolution with a younger, impressionable Gen-y audience that frankly needs to hear about this stuff, as it’s more relevant right now than they probably even know.
Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), having broken the tradition of the annual Hunger Game battles, has now been chosen by the rebel army to be the stern face of the growing revolution against the Capital, known as the Mocking Jay. Meanwhile, her old fighting partner Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) is being held within the custody of her enemies, releasing distressing interview footage exclaiming that Katniss has been brain-washed by the rebels. This then prompts the leaders of the revolution (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julianne Moore) to hire Katniss to star in their own propaganda news-reels as they fight in the rubble of their former districts, recently leveled to nothing by the merciless President Snow (Donald Sutherland).
What makes this installment more substantial and engaging is that they have finally done away with the worst element of the past films, those stupid Hunger Games.  Now that they don’t have to build the plot around a series of hokey Home Alone traps and thematic violence they never really had the guts to show in any meaningful way, this movie feels freed from the pressures of fan service, focusing more on directly with the political allegories. It’s gestures towards ideological battles and the complicated role that propaganda plays during war is far more sophisticated and tense than the series has been known to provide thus far.
          Katniss is sure that Peeta is being puppeted or mislead to say the things he says against her and he believes the same of her, and in the real world, where the political right and left are split 50/50, that’s exactly how each party frames the other’s point of view.  In the movie, while bombs are being hurled and bodies are being stepped over, the battle for truth is the most important one being fought because both sides don’t seem to be all that concerned with moving the line of objectivity wherever they need to make a convincing argument.
        Sometimes, however, the message is a little muddled. After a previous scene where Katniss speaks furiously into a camera about mistreatment of her people by the Capital, her leaders re-cut the speech into a propaganda video that recalls the look and style of a "Hunger Games" movie trailer. It’s a meta moment that while clever on the surface and grin inducing, maybe doesn't mean quite as much we are supposed think it does. (Is this about the compromising nature of celebrity? Are Hollywood films propaganda pieces? What are you getting at movie?)
Director Francis Lawrence revels in the story’s bleakness and designs many unnerving action moments that work quite well, including a visually striking break-in sequence at the end of the film, anxiously cross cut with footage of Katniss speaking directly with Sutherland who's eating the scenery up as beard twirling Snow. But, with all that said, I still don’t care about Katniss’ lingering feelings for her childhood friend Gale (Liam Hemsworth), the dialogue is painfully bogged down with exposition and superfluous explanation—remember, these movies are made for teenyboppers—and the Oscar winning Jennifer Laurence does some of the worst fake crying she’s ever done on camera. It’s not a perfect film and while it does some things very well, it’s not the first, second or even 100th film to ever do them, but, in my estimation, after spinning its tires in the dirt with the two previous installments, “Mocking Jay pt.1” is at least finally going somewhere.

Grade: B-

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Nov-2014

Big Hero Six review

            “Big Hero Six” is the perfect example of a post-modern, post-comic-con style of movie that casts its net wide enough to pull in fans of Pixar's emotional whimsy, tech-heavy Japanese anime and fast-paced, Marvel-esque, action set-pieces.  This makes  a lot of sense, seeing as this film is based on a Marvel comic property, of which Disney now owns the vast majority, and produced by Pixar brain-child John Lasseter—admitted fan and enthusiast of anime legend Hayao Miyazaki. But somewhere in this rowdy pastiche there’s still a focused and poignant coming of age story that grounds the referential spectacle, even when the film seems to be at odds with its more sophisticated leanings.
           We're introduced to the future utopia of Sanfransokyo (a literal cultural melding of east and west) through the lead character Hiro (voiced by Ryan Potter), as he wins big money at underground robot battles, of which his older, more collegiate brother Tadashi (Daniel Henney) disapproves. Later, after an exciting tour of his brother’s robotics school, where he meets a like-minded team of four other young inventors, he decides that his best work shouldn’t be displayed in street-level sport. Despite his young age, he applies to join the program by demonstrating his swarm of interlocking mini-bots at a competitive conference, but just after he wins the competition and accepts his admittance at the school, his future goes up in flames when his brother and the college’s lead technician are killed in a terrible explosion. Hiro is then left to mourn his brother through his last invention; an inflatable, non-lethal nursing bot named Baymax (Scott Adsit), who’s determined to lower the child’s stress-level however he can, even if that means helping Hiro and the other students find the masked murderer, who’s now using the mini-bots for wrong-doing.
           What elevates this film past the usual 3D animated fare is the familial warmth for all of these characters injected into the script and the specificity expressed in the world-building. The central relationship between Hiro and the bouncy, Michelin-Man looking Baymax is both funny as the literal-minded robot consistently misunderstands his frustrated, revenge-driven child owner, and overcast with a cloud of melancholy as the story repeatedly draws us back to the themes of personal loss and misdirected grievance. Before the point in which this movie even begins, Hiro and his older brother are established as orphans, raised by their kooky aunt (Maya Rudolf), who runs a street-side bakery to support the two of them. Baymax, though funny in his childlike reaction to new phenomena, is ultimately acting as an emotional Band-Aid for the protagonist and seeks to heal his pain through adventure. Pretty heavy stuff for kids movie, but not unlike the depths Disney or Pixar have previously explored. Where the movie suffers, however, is in its pandering to the blockbuster aesthetic.
           Once Hiro and his friends discover the whereabouts of the movie’s villain the tone shifts dramatically into action-figure ready, comic book popcorn fodder. Whether cleverly commenting on the banality of Marvel’s third-act, superhero destruction-quota, or simply falling prey to it, when the team suddenly builds robotic super-suits that give them all different powers and a large chunk of the movie’s second half is devoted to sequences of flying in between buildings and falling debris, I wondered how much of this was to advance the un-traditional buddy movie so well established in the first act and how much of it is only to serve the dynamic 3D animation. Nevertheless, at its best, “Big Hero Six” is a wonderfully imaginative and tender science-fiction parable and even when it is driving in autopilot, it’s impressively crafted, interesting to look at, and never boring.

Grade: B+

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Nov-2014

Interstellar review

               Much has already been written about Christopher Nolan’s space-time exploration epic “Interstellar.” Every aspect of the film, including its confusing scientific premise and its controversial ending has been debated and scrutinized ad nauseam.   Never mind the fact that this is science fiction, in which the movie’s complex premise and narrative follow-through are supposed be taken only as a creative thought experiment, inviting audiences to dig deeper into the metaphorical layers of the film — at least that’s usually the implied contract we enter in with when it comes to genre fare of this type.
                   What the endless articles and analysis of the supposed plot-holes and “bad-science” says to me is that the movie’s story (not the same thing as plot) apparently isn’t engaging enough to keep people from withholding their suspension of disbelief. Sci-fi deconstructs real paranoias and takes fictional premises to their logical extremes to discuss natural concerns, but this only works if we care about the world created or the character’s involved enough to ignore that everything going on is essentially ridiculous. This, unfortunately, is where “Interstellar” falls short.
                 Like most of Nolan’s movies — especially his original auteur work — this film is filled to brim with ideas. We’re fifty years into the future and the world is struck by another dust-bowl, killing most crops except corn, which, after global climate conditions have worsened to the point of devaluing science, technology and space exploration, puts the priority on basic societal agriculture. Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is an astrophysicist turned corn-farmer who, after discovering a strange message within a gravitational anomaly in his daughter’s bedroom, gets recruited into a secretly-funded NASA exploration, set to enter a wormhole near Saturn that could lead us to a planetary system environmentally specific enough to sustain human life.The downside being that he and his crew of five would enter into a space-time differential caused by relativity, where decades pass like hours and their families would age out of their lives.
               As with most films in this sci-fi tradition, once they get to their destination, things aren’t quite as they thought they would be and plans aren’t as cleanly executed as they’d initially hoped.
Within this setup, Nolan addresses the critics who had previously complained about his emotional remoteness by weaving into the plot a supposedly tender father/daughter story about sacrifice and abandonment.   Towards the middle of the movie, Anne Hathaway, who plays another astronaut, reveals an ulterior motive that contradicts the crew’s prime directive, in which she declares that love is a quantifiable scientific measurement. She’s wrong, and so is this movie.
                 Despite Nolan's best efforts, every attempt at emotional reality and observation is squashed by the movie’s intensely calculated puzzle-box construction, which, like “Inception,” leaves every character (as   tearful as they may be through this three-hour ordeal) more like a pawn in Nolan’s technical chess game than a fully realized, three-dimensional human being. Performances like McConaughey as the film’s conflicted protagonist, Hathaway as the film’s needless counter-argument, and Jessica Chastain as Cooper’s embittered adult daughter who’s waiting impatiently on earth for his return, are realized to the best of their abilities and somewhere underneath the weight of this overloaded script and the oppressively fractured cross-cut editing, they might have even made a real impact.  All of this, along with an increasingly labored third act that piles plot on top of plot and then reverses everything in on itself (the signature Chris Nolan “ta-dah”), left me completely frozen out of the picture.
                Cinematographer Hoyt Van Hoytema shoots the film in a gritty realism that remarkably contrasts with the overwhelming space vistas. Make no mistake about it; a lot of this film is breathtaking and technically accomplished, and Nolan’s ambition as a screenwriter and director is totally in reverence to the art-form of cinema. And thank god that he’s given the money and studio go-ahead to fully explore his passions, but unfortunately, with this, and much of his latter commercial work, his filmic ambitions have created a stumbling block that often defies audiences to interact with his stories on a human level.

Grade: C+

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Nov-2014

Nightcrawler review

In the wake of the media blitz surrounding the recent Ebola scares and the minute-by-minute news coverage devoted to the few cases brought over to America by health officials working in the highly affected regions of Africa, Dan Gilroy’s sleazy suspense film “Nightcrawler,” which skewers media outlets who profit on paranoia, would seem hilariously timely and ironic if it weren’t so real and unsettling.  The now-viral video segment in which Fox News’ Shepard Smith broke the journalistic fourth wall and stepped away from his network’s regular programming to reassure fear-gripped Americans that they’re okay and that the reality of the situation isn’t necessarily as bad as the news might have us believe, suggested, at least for a brief moment, a tipping point in which basic human morals outweighed the media’s weekly bottom-line.  

Though set in the microcosm of local LA reporting, “Nightcrawler,” without apology, thoroughly skewers the world of cutthroat exploitation journalism by framing its argument around tangential concerns of economic desperation and the rise of internet self-help woo-woo, wrapped in a stingy self-reflexive jab at Hollywood’s tendency to alter reality in favor of the glamour and grime of ‘reality-ness .’ In short, this is probably the smartest and most immersive thriller likely to be seen this year, despite having been released on a minimally-attended Halloween weekend.

As the uncomfortably desperate people-pleaser Louis Bloom, Jake Gyllenhaal drops a third of his usual body-mass to play the type of character we’re usually used to seeing him hunt down as a cop in films like “Zodiac” or last year’s “Prisoners.”  We follow closely as he steals, lies and manipulates his way through Los Angeles looking for low-level work, until he finally finds the job of a lifetime when he pulls over on the side of the road to investigate a car-crash and discovers a freelance video operation headed by a mustachioed Bill Paxton who’s there to capture and sell grisly footage of crime and destruction for the local nightly news. With a small amount of dishonestly earned startup capital, Bloom buys himself a digital camera and hires a criminally underpaid ‘intern’ named Rick (Riz Ahmed) and together they comb the city’s suburbs looking for valuable blood and mayhem.

Rene Russo, who, along with Gyllenhaal is nomination worthy here, plays the producer of a fledgling LA news station who strikes an exclusive deal with Bloom, so long as he keeps bringing in the gory goods, which of course only enables his troubled psychosis. Given the parable-like meta-metaphor going on here, it’s not a stretch to assume that she stands in for the sensational media as a whole; the local news, the global news, the 24 hour cable news, Hollywood, the tabloids, reality TV, and the rest of the morally neutral enterprises that bank on perpetuating negativity.  

Somewhere between the fast-talking, self-centered ice of “American Psycho’s” Patrick Bateman and Robert De Niro’s portrayal of the comically pathetic Rupert Pupkin in Scorsese’s cult masterpiece “The King of Comedy,” what makes Bloom such a fascinating and terrifying character to watch is that he’s too good at his job. While we can’t believe the depraved lengths he’s willing to go to get to the scene of the crime before his competition or the lines he’s willing cross to get the perfect shots of carnage he needs, in today’s economic circumstances, we somewhat admire his tenacity and his keen ability to rig the system, given his ability to completely disconnect from humanity.  

With Gilroy’s patient and subtly stylish direction, at times recalling the William Friedkin’s street-movies “Cruising” and “The French Connection,” we’re lulled by the darkly romantic atmosphere of the film into rooting for the character’s success, which later slaps us with our own moral convictions and creates an uneasy tension in our bellies. It’s this kind of blackly humorous, subversive cynicism that will both turn off the portion of the audience who like their movies to leave them feeling good and tickle those who appreciate razor-sharp and perversely misanthropic satire.

Grade: A

Originally published by the Idaho State Journal/Nov-2014

Fury review

               While still retaining the base entertainments of the war genre, David Ayer’s WW2 flick “Fury” tackles topics of humanity, masculinity, ideology and national loyalty in a dense and deliberate way. It’s an ensemble buddy war drama in the tradition of “The Dirty Dozen”—or maybe even more testosterone-driven westerns such as “Rio Bravo” and especially “The Wild Bunch”—but with a leftist post-Vietnam, post-9/11 introspective sensibility that questions the overall effectiveness of war as a means to an end and ponders the long-lasting impact on the individual soldiers caught up in its hell. Sometimes wallowing in its moral greys and other times manipulating the audience with the visceral simplicities of black and white, the mix of these two ideological outlooks, and the way Ayre attempts to balance them within the narrative, is a subtextual war of its own.

               This story of a team of tank fighters, who, at the tail end of the Second World War, are moving through the devastated villages of Germany, begins when one member is brutally killed and a new soldier is brought in to replace him; a 19 year old typist named Norman (Logan Lerman), who’s ripped from his cozy job and thrown into the rainy, blood stained fields of battle. There he meets the steadfast leader Don Collier (Brad Pitt), the teams’ bible thumping gunman Boyd Swan (Shia LaBeouf ), Grady Travis (Jon Bernthal), a troubled southerner who probably takes too much glee in his murderous duties, and a Mexican-American soldier named Trini Garcia (Michael Pena) who’s already showing early signs of PTSD. It’s clear from the first few missions that Norman is in way over his head, and, having just lost one of their own, rolling into some of the most dangerous tank battles against the Nazi’s near-impervious Panzers, the rest of team doesn’t have the patience for him to get comfortable with the idea of taking a human life.

               Ayer’s follow-up to his 2012 found-footage cop-drama “End of Watch” builds on the themes of brotherhood and masculinity in a more cohesive and more pessimistic way. The extremely tense and explicitly violent war scenes are spaced appropriately by character building moments of reflexivity, letting the audience get to know and sympathize with this group of men who’re trying their hardest to keep their emotional vulnerability bottled in.  However, though the performances are sensitively portrayed and the battle scenes are competently staged and shot, when their tank rolls over the dead bodies of their enemies and they poke their heads out of their mobile shelter to shoot down the newly appointed Nazi youth, some of whom are younger than our movie’s hero, the nobility of nationalistic bravery becomes difficult to identify or enjoy. And sometimes--if I’m giving the movie the full benefit of the doubt--that’s the point.

               In one key scene, after a village battle has ended, Lerman and Pitt’s characters enter the home of two German sisters, and after Pitt’s Collier pulls them out of hiding, visibly frightened and shaking with fear, he offers them both eggs and breakfast as a peace offering.  Though this moment breathes with steady directorial observation, as the story progresses, what follows on their path is a series of increasingly depressing and devastating act of violence until the movie’s final showdown between the out-manned, out-gunned Fury and a sizable SS militia.

               Does “Fury” want to be a think piece about the lowest depths of depravity world governments have forced on the innocent minds of naïve recruits looking to serve their country, who then have to numb their souls in order to toe the line, or does it want to be a rousing coming of age story about having your blinders removed and being forced to see what evil looks like by figuring out your place in opposition against it?   It’s difficult to tell sometimes, resulting in a technically accomplished action-drama that tests your moral barometer as you’re often unsure if you want to cheer along or wince in disgust.

Grade: B -
Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Oct-2014