Extra Cinema: Fury (15)

At a critical juncture in David Ayer’s wartime thriller, Brad Pitt’s grizzled tank commander turns to an inexperienced new recruit and sounds the death knell on morality and diplomacy in a time of conflict.

“Ideals are peaceful, history’s violent,” he growls.

Those words resonate throughout Fury, a brutal, mud-spattered tour of duty during the final weeks of the Second World War, as seen through the gun sights of an M4 Sherman tank crew.

Fury paints a familiar picture of the hell of war, directed with testosterone-fuelled swagger by Ayer.

Pitt leads the cast with a strong performance as a battle-weary commander who holds back a tide of anguish and uncertainty until he is alone, and Lerman is equally compelling as a naive whelp who develops a taste for killing Nazis.

Ayer obliges him with an astronomical body count and foreign fields slathered as far as the eye can see in mud, freshly spilt blood and the bodies of the fallen.

Rating: 7/10