“Fury” is literally visceral—a kind of war horror film, which is, of course, what good combat films should be.
Top [Brad Pitt], a successful career warrior, is always alert. A natural psychologist, he draws on the strengths of each crew member to keep them all alive. Like Dana Andrews in this kind of movie seventy years ago, he’s an ideal leader, decisive and stoical, but with one difference: out of sight, kneeling by the side of a tank, he falls apart.
He’s [Norman, Logan Lerman] the audience’s surrogate—terrified, ignorant of combat, and nonviolent by nature—and he’s the one cliché in the movie, the heir to those gentle fellows (Gary Cooper’s Sergeant York, Audie Murphy’s Audie Murphy) who start off quietly but learn the higher wisdom of war, which is that you must kill, and kill well, or be killed.