"Fury" is the name of a Sherman tank, manned by a team of American soldiers in the final days of World War II. She has just crossed into German territory and, at the start of the film, has lost one of her crew, and all of her battalion.

Her commander is Don "Wardaddy" Collier (Brad Pitt), leader of Boyd (Shia LaBeouf), Trini (Michael Pena) and Grady (Jon Bernthal), and the newly arrived to the frontline and extremely green Norman (Logan Lerman), trained as a typist but assigned as a tank driver.

While they have lost a number of men, Wardaddy has brought his team and tank throughfrom campaigns in Africa early in the war, although the war's final days will prove to be their hardest.

Outnumbered and outgunned, the team head on to one final battle against a German army and among citizenry who know they have lost the war but haven't given up the fight.

Director David Ayer has tackled WWII previously, as a writer in his U-boat drama U-571, and his films, both as writer and director, are usually testosterone-soaked examinations of crime and manhood.

With this film, his message is about the toll war takes on the souls of those who fight them and survive, and his screenplay is often brilliant, with well-observed characterisations and some cracking dialogue.

His direction, meanwhile, is a charged affair, flawlessly handling vast and elaborate set-pieces of the theatre of war, while also building in quiet moments, which we frankly need to recover from what are some gruesomely honest moments. This isn't a film for everybody.

The budget must have been enormous, with acres and acres of land returned to trench and mud, thousands of extras believably costumed, and Ayer's team all deserve acknowledgement. The glorious lensing work of Roman Vasyanov is particularly notable; I wish the cinema I saw it in had a bigger screen so I could have better appreciated the scope of it.

This is Brad Pitt's finest role in years – and is this what a 50-year-old man really looks like?

The support cast are all strong, especially Logan Lerman, who my son would recognise as Percy Jackson, a perfectly cast wide-eyed rookie.

Some critics have compared Fury to Saving Private Ryan and I would have to say it's up there.