Fury is perfect for anyone who believes Brad Pitt doesn’t kill enough Nazis in Inglourious Basterds. David Ayer’s film is a bloodbath of gore, violence, and banality. While the action and explosions will satisfy World War II enthusiasts, the unsympathetic characters and lack of stakes will make the rest of us wish we’d seen The Judge instead.

Set during the last months of World War II, the film follows the murderous rampage of a tank crew through Germany. Led by a stone-faced Pitt, the crew must battle against child soldiers, the SS, and enemy tanks. Exposed to the constant brutality of war, they travel through a forsaken landscape of violence and death committing as many war crimes as their Nazi counterparts. The film culminates in a last stand against a column of German soldiers threatening the American supply line. With their tank immobilized, the crew must halt the enemy advance at all cost.

From the beginning it’s apparent that the film’s plot is meaningless, and only transports us from one battle scene to the other. Fortunately, the action is the strongest component of the film. People looking to see hundreds of Nazis being ruthlessly murdered by a tank will have their bloodlust satiated. Anyone looking for a compelling interpretation of World War II should watch Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Downfall and save their money.

A quarter into the film we become aware that Fury suffers from a painful lack of vision. Ayer’s film is a dull tapestry of clichés borrowed from 70 years of World War II films. It’s as if the filmmakers took their favorite moments and constructed a Frankenstein’s monster of predictability. Of course after over half a century certain tropes are unavoidable. Yet other directors have reused tropes and still created unique interpretations of the war. In Saving Private Ryan Steven Spielberg paid homage to war films of the past, but he gave us a vision of the war we’d never seen before. Even set against the horrific violence of D-Day Spielberg connected with us on an emotional level.

What Ayer fails to realize is that relatable characters are essential to any war film. Without a sympathetic protagonist the violence of the film is meaningless. Action without stakes is boring. If we care about the people in the film then we will invest in what is happening. For instance the last battle of The Bridge over the River Kwai is riveting because over the course of the film we’ve become invested with the heroes. With Fury we have no empathy, let alone sympathy, for what happens to the crew. Fury’s characters are war film caricatures lacking any resemblance to human beings and speaking only in platitudes that would make the Pentagon’s marketing team roll their eyes. Towards the end we don’t care what happens to them.

The difficulty with World War II films is that the story has been told countless times. Any films where Americans are the heroes will have the same narrative. Eventually the Nazis lose. Fury offers nothing that we haven’t seen in other films. Patton is a masterful examination of US military’s monstrosity. Saving Private Ryan is an unflinching portrayal of the viciousness and awfulness of war. Even Zoltan Korda’s Sahara (1943) is a gripping narrative of an American tank crew holding off an advancing German battalion. All of these films are captivating explorations of war’s dehumanizing effects. Fury only gives us the sensory overload of pointless violence.