I don't watch a lot of TV, but yesterday I tuned in to about an hour or so of Fury, a WWII drama with Brad Pitt as the leader of ab American tank crew in the late days of WW2, when the Americans took city after city, often with terrible street fights and atrocious acts of violence against their own people by fanatical Nazis - like hanging supposed traitors on streetlamps with signs around their necks proclaiming their sins.
It is a very violent film. Lots of dead bodies, blood and body parts splattering around, shrieking soldiers emanating from burning tanks, only to be mowed down by machine gun fire in spite of being defenseless. Shia LaBeouf is, for once, in a serious film role playing the youngster in the tank crew who is losing his innocence in more than one way. In one scene, he picks up the notes of a Brahms song from a piano in a sequestered flat. He starts playing the song. A young German woman living there joins him singing. They lose their virginity to each other in a touching scene, and a few minutes later she dies when a German bomber drops a bomb on a German town in order to hit American soldiers and German traitors, while he hides under his tank wailing like a little boy and being pummeled back into the tank by his comrades.
I always liked Brad Pitt as an actor, but in this role he is impressive. Disillusioned, hardboiled, unsmiling, cold, yet loyal to his crew and with soft spots here and there. His back is full of burn scars, as presumably is his soul. A very gritty, dark story, where being a hero in ridding the world from the Nazis carries a high price tag in terms of a wounded soul even if you make it out alive. I don't know the end of the film, because I couldn't stay up until two in the morning. So I don't know if the entire crew dies holding out, Thermopylae style, against a troupe of well-armed SS men or if they (well, Shia LaBoeuf, at least) are saved at the last second by the Aericans storming in. Because of course, they lost their radio in a fight, and ran over a mine, so they have to stay in their tank where they are.
Very, very dark war drama, the only way you can do one if you are not Stanley Kubrick doing Full Metal Jacket. I commend it to the house, if (given the connaisseur audience at theis board) I am not the last one who has seen it anyway.