‘Fury,’ Starring Brad Pitt, a Raw Look at Warfare

The New York Times ^ | 30 July 2014 | MICHAEL CIEPLY

[Theoria]

In the first minutes of the writer-director David Ayer’s “Fury,” about American soldiers slogging through Europe in the final days of World War II, Brad Pitt, as the tanker Don Collier, slides his knife behind the eye of a German lieutenant.

“Piercing his brainpan with a CRACK,” is how Mr. Ayer’s screenplay describes the move. (In Dolby Digital sound, it will be a very loud crack.) Mr. Pitt, our hero, then calmly wipes his blade clean on the German’s uniform.

The Good War this is not.

In what promises to be one of the most daring studio movies in an awards season that will bring several World War II films, Mr. Ayer, Mr. Pitt and a band of producers backed by Sony Pictures Entertainment are poised to deliver what the popular culture has rarely seen. That is, a relentlessly authentic portrayal — one stuntman was run through with a bayonet on the set — of the extremes endured, and inflicted, by Allied troops who entered Germany in the spring of 1945.

Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds,” which also starred Mr. Pitt, was brutal but surreal. Few believed that a real-life counterpart to his blood-crazed Lt. Aldo Raine had collected Nazi scalps by the hundred.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Not to toot horns but it really is interesting how much of a factor engineering has been in the story of civilization.

Well, EEs have something to live down in the development of the telegraph . . .

It’s not the telegraph as such which is the problem, of course - it’s the killer app of the telegraph (other than the real biggie, command and control of the railroads) which is the problem. I speak, of course, of the wire service in general and the Associated Press in particular. Which set about making news reporting objective, and - tragically - ended up thinking it had actually succeeded in that.

Unfortunately, that decision implied ceasing to even try actually to be objective. Leaving journalism in a state of self-righteous “liberalism.”

Now, of course, EEs have redeemed their rep somewhat by creating the computer and the www. ;-)

[Yardstick]

Haha — roger that.

[L.A.Justice]

Does anyone remember BATTLE OF BULGE? Robert Shaw and Henry Fonda were in the film...

In that movie, M-48 tanks pretended to be Tigers...

No Sherman tanks in that movie...Chaffee tanks were used by US troops in that film...

In movie A BRIDGE TOO FAR, Sherman tanks were used by British...Some US tanks, again, pretended to be Tiger tanks in that movie...