Brian De Palma, for better or worse, loves to mess around with some of the expectations from the audience through the genre he's working in, and the Fury is a good, messy, peculiar case of how to do a highly stylized picture. It was the director's follow-up to Carrie, and here the horror of suburban school life is replaced with some more outrageously violent, practically astounding moments. There's also a lot of plot going on, too, or at least it might seem that way. Sometimes, too, the action and turns have to depend on a complete suspension of disbelief logic. De Palma holds this logic steady enough, and provides a combination of a Government thriller and psychic power drama. What helps though is the casting, as Kirk Douglas in hero mode works best through this very narrowly focused man on a mission; John Cassavetes in one of his very best acting roles as the cold- though devil-friendly- antagonist as he kidnaps his 'gifted' son. Amy Irving fills up the rest of the main acting bill as the female counterpart to the son, getting images and (bad) connections with what's happening to him. So, it is sort of silly stuff, but also taken seriously enough in this thriller form to go with. <br /><br />Occasionally there will be something that isn't directed quite well enough even when something interesting is going on. But most, if not all, of the scenes with a lot of action and multiple, gruesome deaths and various bleedings via psychic boy/girl, are fun and entertaining in that very stylish way that De Palma has with his thrillers, giving the audience what they've paid to see and such. And for the greater part of the film I bought into it, that Douglas could be this old man with enough sense to match skills as an ex-agent, or that Andrew Stevens as the son and Irving could be convincing as vulnerable, confused teens with certain 'unstable' ways. De Palma also gets some great atmospheric backup from John Williams' score, and the pleasure in the plausibility of some of the more graphic scenes. Whether it's up to par with the director's best work would depend on how much of a fan one might be of his more crazy, over-the-top pictures with darkly comic scenes amassed into a potboiler of a story that would make Hitchcock probably grin and wince in equal measure. <br /><br />By the way, the hype that has been brought up by the critics regarding the final scene lives up to it, and it's one of the best scenes of De Palma's career in just the sheer 'wow' level of gustiness, some pun intended.