Review No.74: Fury

So I seem to be the only person who hasn't seen The Avengers yet, but fear not dear readers I will endeavour to do so next week, however I do know that Samuel L Jackson plays the character of Nick Fury in the film which is odd as here he stars in a film called Fury however it has nothing to do with the comic book franchise. I would even go as far as to say that the film is trying to cash in on Jackson's character by changing the name for its UK release from The Samaritan to Fury. Anyway instead of playing a mysterious eye-patched dude, Jackson pays Foley a former conman who had been jailed after killing his former partner in crime. The partner's son Ethan tracks Foley down trying to convince him to participate in one last con however when he turns him down the once charming Ethan turns nasty sending a hooker named Iris to tempt it over to the dark side. However Foley ends up as Iris' protector and the two start a sexual relationship but Ethan ruins it with a revelation about her true identity which forces Foley back into his life of crime. The con they are about to pull is 'The Samaritan' in which a husband has to pay to save his junkie wife from the crime lord she owes money to, in this case Tom Wilkinson's bonkers wine obseswed Englishman, before stealing his money. Though Ethan has Foley on board things don't really go to plan especially when Iris throws a spanner in the works towards of the film.

Samuel L Jackson begins Fury by delivering an opening montage as he leaves prison making me believe that this was some sort of Shawshank Redemption tale with Jackson in the Morgan Freeman role, especially since former Shawshank resident Gil Bellows pops up here as a bartender, however it soon becomes a revenge thriller. The final third of the film then focuses in on the con so it becomes more like an Ocean's 11 noir with everybody wearing slick suits and talking about plotting the con to the final detail before another shift in tone linking back to the start of the film. For me I felt Jackson was phoning his performance in and there was nothing special about it to the extent where I almost felt like Sam was doing a favour for director David Weaver. Thankfully there are some decent supporting actors with the British actress Ruth Negga impressing as Iris while Wilkinson hams it up to a major degree in the scenes in which he features as Xavier. There's no denying that this was a solid film with a decent idea however Weaver's tonal shifts coupled with Jackson's sub-par performance meant that at the end of the day Fury felt completely unremarkable.

Verdict: A couple of decent performances in a film that doesn't outstay its welcome doesn't make it any more remarkable so I'm going to give it the same score as Transit with 5.5/10