'Fury' covers the same ground as other war movies

Military-themed movies have almost always fallen into one of two camps:

loud action-packed romps with quips aplenty, and bloodletting kept to a minimum (ensuring that the young audience will be able to spend their allowance at the box office hassle-free), or dark treatises on the price of war, the loss of innocence, the sheer terror-slash-exhilaration of the fighting itself -- and the screen is bathed in death and destruction (plus they're equally loud and extra gory, which is supposed to make parents more cautious when considering whether or not to let the kiddies see it, which sometimes works and sometimes not so much).

The new movie "Fury" falls into the second category. Written and directed by David Ayer, it's a violent, hard-R war picture, one that presses viewers up against the brutal, gruesome truths of tank combat in the last days ofWorldWar Two. There's a lot in the movie that is commendable, including some excellent performances, but it ultimately feels like ground that's been trod by other, better films. The movie's title comes from the name of the Sherman tank commanded by Brad Pitt's character, a staff sergeant named Don who prefers the moniker Wardaddy. He leads his predictably rough crew of four into the fights of their lives, trying to survive their progress into Germany against the last pockets of Nazi resistance. To his men, he is a tougher-than-leather leader, but the movie allows the audience to see the fissures that are threatening to split him apart.

The film picks up after a particularly brutal battle that cost his team their assistant driver. The death isn't shown on-screen, but what happened is certainly suggested as the newly-assigned and fresh-faced assistant driver, Norman (played by Logan Lerman) has the decidedly unpleasant duty of

cleaning up the dead man's post. The movie's violence and intensity only

ramps up from there. Norman goes through the regular tropes of being the

quiet rookie in a veteran unit: he's openly mocked and bullied by the others at

first, particularly the brown-toothed Grady (Jon Bernthal), questioned about

his religious beliefs by Boyd (Shia LaBeouf), and given bare-bones training by

the tank's other driver, Garcia (Michael Peņa).

But wide-eyed Norman is not a quick study.When he fails to report spotting

a suspicious movement alongside a convoy -- and that failure leads to the lead vehicle being destroyed -- Wardaddy orders him to execute a captured German soldier who is pleading for his life.When Norman protests,

his boss forces the terrified underling's finger on to the trigger and pulls it, killing the prisoner. The scene is intense and ugly -- but rings of truth; combat is about surviving against an opponent who might be begging for

mercy now, but may have been trying to kill you seconds before, or may try to kill you later. There are several other scenes like it, all with undeniable power, but the movie isn't much more than that.

Most of the characters are developed along standard war movie archetypes, without digging much deeper.

The splattery violence means gallons of blood and grue fly across the screen; there's so much that it begins to feel a bit gratuitous. And the end of the movie, which features a climactic battle between the Fury crew and a Nazi convoy ends exactly the way you think it will.

"Fury" isn't an awful film by any stretch, and its attempt at an honest depiction

of tank warfare is laudable. The five major characters are all wellplayed

by their actors, with the strongest work being turned in by Pitt and --

surprise -- LaBeouf, and the look of the movie is appropriately muddy, smoky

and bloody. But the script's strict following of the standard-issue war movie

formula saps the movie of much of its potential.

Content advisory: "Fury" is rated R for strong sequences of war violence,

some grisly images, and language throughout, but that's putting it rather mildly. The violence and imagery is very graphic and definitely not suitable for children. There is also some harsh sex talk, particularly about Norman and a young German woman.