FURY

Movies about World War II have shifted from almost shameless praise for the courage of Allied soldiers to a combination of war is hell and how brave our soldiers are.  This new formula is at the heart of Fury, a war film that spares neither the horrors nor potential greatness of war.

At the opening of the film, Sergeant Don "Wardaddy" Collier (Brad Pitt) is returning from battle in German territory, in the final days of WWII in his tank, Fury, with gunner Boyd "Bible" Swan (Shia LaBeouf), loader Grady "Coon-Ass" Travis (Jon Bernthal), and Trini "Gordo" Garcia (Michael Pena).  Their assistant driver is dead -- along with the rest of their platoon.  The new assistant driver is Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman), a typist who's never been inside a tank and only been in the army for eight weeks.  Collier seeks to teach the naive, idealistic Ellison about the horrors of war -- which is easy, as they're off to battle once again.  What follows is a mix of unit bonding and abuse, shoot-em-up battles, lulls during which even peace is tense, and a final battle against impossible odds.

Fury doesn't break any new ground, but it is well done.  The main dramatic conflict is between Pitt's Collier and Lerman's Ellison, as Ellison gets ground down and grows up as Collier brings him into his own war-weary world.  The movie gives a feel for the horrors of war, not just in the deadly battles but in the brutal aftermath (such as Allies soldiers machine-gunning corpses to make sure they're all dead, or not relaxing in an occupied town where any man, woman or child could still try and kill them). The movie builds to a nice (if slightly predictable) climax, and while it drags a bit in the middle Fury otherwise moves at a good pace.  For a good modern war movie that doesn't pull its punches or glorify the brave soldiers, Fury delivers.

Overall grade: B+

Reviewed by James Lynch

Enigma - Robert Harris (1995)

A good mystery novel has much in common with a good cipher. It should be difficult to penetrate, and yet, once solved, should demonstrate a clean elegance. Both the Enigma machine, and Enigma, the book, succeed in this task.

Robert Harris has chosen the code-breaking center at Bletchley Park, north-west of London, as the setting and backdrop for this novel. In World War II, Bletchley Park was the place where the famous, or rather infamous, German Enigma code was broken. Rather than walk us through the history, fascinating though it may be, Harris has chosen to create a fictional cast of characters and put them through their paces in a fictional mystery-thriller. He carries off this task admirably.

Our hero, Tom Jericho, after having a nervous breakdown, is summoned back from his recuperation at Cambridge to work on the latest crisis at Bletchley. The Germans have suddenly changed all the Enigma settings and unless they can crack the code, Allied shipping will suffer greatly at the hands of German U-Boats in the Atlantic. The code-breaking is an interesting side-plot, as the real plot centers around the question of why the Germans changed the codes. Is there a leak at Bletchley? And what can explain the strange behaviour of Tom's ex-girlfriend, the "arctic blond" Claire Romilly?

Harris writes well, and with an excellent sense of the time and place. The feel of wartime Britain pervades the pages, and is contrasted with the abstract world of the intellect in which the cryptanalysts labour. The plotting is intricate, and yet, when it resolves, it all seems so clear.

I won't claim that this is great literature, but it makes for a very pleasant few hours reading.

Overall Grade: B+

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

War is hell, and in the hands of Quentin Tarantino it's also quite talky. His new movie Inglourious Basterds is a strange mix of exploitation flick and cinema discussion.

Towards the end of World War Two, Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt, using a comical Southern accent) leads an eight-man squad of Jewish-American soldiers called "the Basterds" out to spread death and fear in Nazi-occupied France. They use what Raine calls "Apache methods" -- scalping their Nazi victims -- and permanently scarring a survivor who is sent to tell the tale of the Basterds.

On the German side, Colonel Hans Landa (a brilliant Christoph Waltz) is seemingly in the middle of everything. Nicknamed "the Jew hunter," Landa is always sophisticated, charming, easily switching back and forth between English, French, and German -- and always menacing.

Shoshanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent) is a French Jew who Landa let escape after he had her family slaughtered in 1941. Three years later she owns and runs a cinema. She gets the romantic attention of Private Frederick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl), a Nazi war hero made the star of hus upcoming propaganda film. He arranges for the film to be shown at Dreyfus' cinema, and the premiere will include most of the Nazi high command -- including Hitler. This makes it a perfect target for Dreyfus to have her revenge -- a thought shared by German film star and double agent Bridget von Hammersmark (Dianne Kruger), whose mission is to bring the Basterds in to destroy the Nazi leadership. But nothing ever goes right, and Landa is always around...

Inglourious Basterds is an uneven mix of a movie. There are several elements of exploitation cinema -- the early scalping, the fiery finale, an over-the-top telling of one soldier's Nazi-killing exploits -- but the majority of the film consists of people sitting around and talking, often about films. The movie is divided into chapters, showing that Tarantino (who wrote and directed this movie) didn't know how to transition from one part of the movie to another.

As with most ensemble war movies, the actors making up the Basterds are pretty indistinguishable. (The notable exception is director Eli Roth, who as Donny Donowitz likes to beat prisoners to death with a baseball bat.) Brad Pitt has a lot of fun as the laid-back leader of a bunch of soldiers for whom "killin' Nazis" is a lot of fun. Christopher Waltz' role as Landa should make him the villain of the year, and while the women here aren't given a wide range, they are certainly not frail and helpless, waiting for men to rescue them.

Inglorious Basterds isn't trashy enough to be sheer exploitation cinema, nor is it self-analytical enough to explore the themes it presents. (For example, no one ever comments that the American good guys are killing prisoners and torturing survivors.) But while this movie is uneven, there's plenty of dark humor and good acting to keep it entertaining.

Overall grade: B-

Reviewed by James Lynch