The new film Fury sees Brad Pitt once again playing an American soldier who battles Nazis.
The actor, who last portrayed a character fighting German troops during World War II in Inglorious Basterds, this time leads a motley tank crew made up of men played by the likes of Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Michael Peña and The Walking Dead alum Jon Bernthal.
Fury is set during the final stages of the war in 1945 and was directed by David Ayer and is set for release on Friday.
Here's what five top critics said about the movie:
1. The New York Times' A.O. Scott says the Nazi killings are "staged with an air of grim necessity," and that the director, who also wrote the film's screenplay, "has a way of filming violence that is both intense and matter-of-fact."
"But within this gore-spattered, superficially nihilistic carapace is an old-fashioned platoon picture, a sensitive and superbly acted tale of male bonding under duress," he writes.
Fury was filmed in the fall of 2013, months before LaBeouf stirred controversy with a plagiarism scandal, subsequent apologies, bizarre public behavior (including an #IAMSORRY performance art exhibit), an outpatient rehab stint and an arrest for disorderly conduct, while drunk, at a Broadway show. He recently talked and joked about the latter incident in the press.
Shia took drastic measures to make his performance believable in Fury—the actor had a tooth pulled and Lerman said he also cut his face with a knife.
Scott called LaBeouf's performance in Fury "excellent," adding that "one of the film's subtlest and most intriguing touches" is the "tenderness" that exists between the actor's character, Bible, and Pitt's, Wardaddy.
2. The Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy calls Fury a "good, solid World War II movie, nothing more and nothing less" and says the movie is "rugged and realistic."
"Pitt is terrific here as a seasoned pro who's tough because the war has made him so but clearly has a lot going on inside; there can be no doubt he's committed acts he regrets," he writes.
3. Variety's Peter Debruge says Pitt's role in Fury is a "watered-down version of his Inglourious Basterds character" and that the movie offers a "disappointingly bland look at a World War II tank crew."
"Though colorfully embellished with authentic detail and logistically complex to bring to the screen, Ayer's script is bland at the most basic story level, undermined by cardboard characterizations and a stirring yet transparently silly climactic showdown," he says.
He writes that he thinks that while Ayer "goes out of his way to capture authentic-sounding slang" for the characters, they "express themselves in terse, trailer-quotable soundbites that tend to remind us that we're dealing with a collection of stereotypes, of which Bernthal's redneck is the least convincing, though none ever seems more than skin-deep."
Debruge says the "baby of the group," Norman, played by Lerman, is the "most full-fledged character" in Fury.
4. IndieWire's Eric Kohn gives Fury a C grade, saying he found LaBeouf's performance to be "bland" and that Peña and Bernthal "play thin stereotypes." Lerman's character, he says, is "the sole sympathetic figure" but adds that his "whiny presence offers nothing new."
The critic compliments cinematographer Roman Vasyonov on his "gray-tinted visuals" but calls Ayer's script "plodding" and "dim-witted. "
Fury, he says, "uses its crass, thundering exterior as an excuse for the absence of pretty much anything else."
5. USA Today's Claudia Puig gives Fury three out of four stars, calling the film a "solidly acted, engrossing drama about the hellishness of combat" but says the "key characters are "not developed fully enough for audiences to feel invested in their fates."
The movie, she adds, "suffers from repetitiveness, broken up by scenes of extreme gore."