Fury | Little White Lies

Fury

21 Oct 2014 / Released: 22 Oct 2014

Words by Adam Woodward

Directed by David Ayer

Starring Brad Pitt, Logan Lerman, and Shia LaBeouf

Group of soldiers seated on a military tank, wearing camouflage uniforms and helmets.
Group of soldiers seated on a military tank, wearing camouflage uniforms and helmets.
3

Anticipation.

Pitt vs Fritz.

3

Enjoyment.

Great work from Pitt and co. Ayer lays it on a bit thick though.

3

In Retrospect.

The battle scenes stick in the mind like hot shrapnel.

Brad Pitt sur­veys the hor­rors of war a bust­ed-up tank in David Ayer’s soul­ful if uno­rig­i­nal tale of con­flict and brotherhood.

The stench of death and diesel hangs heavy in the air in David Ayer’s Fury, a film that with grim rel­ish pro­vides a stark reminder (if ever one was need­ed) of the indeli­ble hor­rors of war. It may not be a Dan­tean warn­ing that’s embla­zoned along the bar­rel of the epony­mous war machine, but from the out­set it’s clear in which direc­tion we’re headed.

April, 1945. In des­per­a­tion Hitler has ordered every man, woman and child to defend the remain­ing Nazi-occu­pied strong­holds at what­ev­er cost. Lead­ing the Allied charge is a US tank unit com­mand­ed by Don War­dad­dy” Col­lier (Brad Pitt), who by some small mir­a­cle, has so far man­aged to keep his promise and keep his crew alive. They began the War togeth­er killing Ger­mans in Africa, then France, Bel­gium, now they find them­selves in unfa­mil­iar ter­ri­to­ry; killing Ger­mans in Ger­many. Vic­to­ry is with­in sight, but as Col­lier prophet­i­cal­ly cau­tions, the killing’s not done yet.

After the crew’s assis­tant dri­ver is killed in action, Col­lier is assigned an inex­pe­ri­enced young recruit named Nor­man Elli­son (the excel­lent Logan Ler­man), who’s trained to change rib­bons, not mag­a­zines. He’s apolo­getic, unpre­pared and com­plete­ly out of his depth. But this is no time for empa­thy and a kind word of encour­age­ment. Not when there are so many lives still at risk. So Col­lier gives Nor­man a few harsh lessons in the real­i­ties of war, and the film grad­u­al­ly shifts focus to that well-worn war movie motif – the boy sol­dier forced to become a man on the battlefield.

Lucky for Norm, he’s learn­ing from the best. Years spent sealed inside this cold, steel cas­ket may have tak­en its toll on the rest of the crew – Shia LaBeouf, Michael Peña and Jon Bern­thal con­vinc­ing­ly exhibit­ing ear­ly signs of post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der – but Pitt’s no-non­sense Sarge remains an author­i­ta­tive, sto­ic pres­ence. Pitt wears his years well here, his soul­ful, bat­tle-scarred face giv­ing added grav­i­tas to each chest-swelling mono­logue about hon­our and broth­er­hood. Essen­tial­ly he’s play­ing a straighter, less car­toon­ish ver­sion of his char­ac­ter in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds, the wit­less chutz­pah replaced by a pater­nal altru­ism that posi­tions him as a more con­ven­tion­al goodie.

In exam­in­ing cama­raderie and spir­it from this claus­tro­pho­bic, pres­sure-cook­er per­spec­tive, Ayer’s film bears some resem­blance to Samuel Maoz’s Lebanon from 2009. The major dif­fer­ence being where that film eschewed action in favour of human dra­ma, Fury boasts it in spades. Yet while we’re used to watch­ing scenes of gris­ly, gut-wrench­ing con­flict unfold on the beach­es and in the trench­es, Ayer choos­es to stage the bulk of the action inside and imme­di­ate­ly around the tank. These noto­ri­ous­ly cum­ber­some vehi­cles hard­ly lend them­selves to high-ten­sion spec­ta­cle, so it is to the director’s cred­it that he man­ages to elic­it such a vis­cer­al response to the film’s action cen­tre­pieces. A scene in which our heroes’ infe­ri­or M4 Sher­man goes up against a mighty Ger­man Tiger in a mud-caked field is a tri­umph of cin­e­mat­ic technique.

Thrilling action aside, how­ev­er, does Ayer actu­al­ly bring any­thing new to the table here? Not real­ly. Grant­ed this is a well-mined sub­ject, but when a film depicts an exhaus­tive­ly stud­ied his­toric event with ear-punch­ing authen­tic­i­ty with­out mak­ing any attempt to add to or chal­lenge the dia­logue sur­round­ing it, its agen­da (and in this case its jin­go­is­tic sub­text) becomes prob­lem­at­ic. Most dis­con­cert­ing of all is the pas­sive man­ner in which the film com­plies with the Hol­ly­wood-approved cus­tom of car­i­ca­tur­ing all Ger­man sol­diers as sneer­ing, shad­ow-lurk­ing gar­goyles. If you thought the Nazis were bad…!” As with his pre­vi­ous films, Sab­o­tage and End of Watch, then, Fury proves Ayer to be an uncom­pro­mis­ing, unpro­gres­sive filmmaker.

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