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The Most Brutal WWII Thriller Ever Made Is About To Vanish From Netflix

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A lot of World War II movies are built around heroism, sacrifice, and the broader sweep of history. Fury has some of that in it, sure, but what it really wants you to feel is mud, exhaustion, terror, and the sense that everyone involved is hanging on by a thread. David Ayer’s 2014 war film is ugly on purpose, and that’s why it works. It isn’t interested in making combat look noble. It wants it to feel like hell. Netflix subscribers won’t have much longer to watch it there.

Fury is among the films leaving Netflix on May 1, and it has also been singled out as one of the major departures in the service’s early-May lineup. That makes this the last stretch for anyone who’s been meaning to revisit one of the more punishing modern studio war films.

Written and directed by Ayer, the film follows a battle-hardened American tank crew pushing through Nazi Germany in the final months of the war. Brad Pitt stars as Don “Wardaddy” Collier, with Logan Lerman as Norman Ellison, Shia LaBeouf as Boyd “Bible” Swan, Michael Peña as Trini “Gordo” Garcia, and Jon Bernthal as Grady “Coon-Ass” Travis.

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Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz
Which Oscar Best Picture
Is Your Perfect Movie?

Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country

Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.

🪜Parasite

🌀Everything Everywhere

☢️Oppenheimer

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🐦Birdman

🪙No Country for Old Men

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01

What kind of film experience do you actually want?
The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.





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02

Which idea grabs you most in a film?
Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?





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03

How do you like your story told?
Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.





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04

What makes a truly great antagonist?
The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?





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05

What do you want from a film’s ending?
The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?





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06

Which setting pulls you in most?
Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.





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07

What cinematic craft impresses you most?
Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.





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08

What kind of main character do you root for?
The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.





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09

How do you feel about a film that takes its time?
Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.





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10

What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema?
The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?





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The Academy Has Decided
Your Perfect Film Is…

Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.

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Parasite

You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.

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Everything Everywhere All at Once

You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.

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Oppenheimer

You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.

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Birdman

You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.

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No Country for Old Men

You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.

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Is ‘Fury’ Worth Watching?

Collider’s review stated that Fury is a powerful and brutal war movie, but it does not dig much deeper than its central point that war destroys people. Set during the final stretch of World War II, the film follows the crew of a tank led by Pitt’s Wardaddy, Logan Lerman playing Norman, a young recruit thrown into horrors he is nowhere near ready for. Their relationship gives the movie its emotional core and is easily the strongest part of the film.

“At one point, Wardaddy tells Norman, ‘Ideals are peaceful; history is violent,’ and Fury has a whole lot of violence to show that people are capable of any atrocity on the battlefield. I admire that the men of Fury aren’t good guys but we get the idea that they’ve become bad through war. They were all Normans at one point, but surrounded by so much horror, it’s almost impossible to avoid taking on a new identity in order to make it through hell. It’s the only way for them to survive. Unfortunately, much like their tank, Fury can hit with a bang, but there’s never much room to maneuver.”

Fury leaves Netflix next month.


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Release Date

October 17, 2014

Runtime

135 Minutes

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