THE European phase of World War II ended on May 7, 1945.

Writer/director David Ayer’s film about a Sherman tank and its five-man crew at the front of the Allied push into western Germany on a mid-April day spares no audience sensitivities in its depiction of the conditions besetting ground forces of both sides in the culminating conflict.

Designed to provide forward-moving cover and support for advancing infantry in World War I, a tank is a death trap for its crew. Tank design and battlefield tactics are a specialised military discipline. Tank crewmen are a breed apart.

The tank Fury, commanded by Sgt Don Collier (Brad Pitt), has fought eastward from the English Channel. Today, it will lead a four-tank formation forward to secure a crossroad that an advancing SS formation needs to control.

As much as anything, Avery’s film is about its five crew. Four, together throughout the campaign, are hard men. The replacement for a dead assistant driver is a teenaged clerk with only eight weeks of army experience, scared and reluctant to kill.

The short, violent action that Fury, immobilised by a landmine, fights at the crossroad gives a fairly clear indication of battle’s confusion and courage.

In 2014, military circumstances are different. But for individual soldiers, reasons for conflict and daily risks are the same as their grandfathers faced. In that sense, “Fury” is both commemoration and message, delivered with energy and conviction.

At all cinemas