Well-Crafted War Film that Explores the Depths of Hell in Battle

Rating: 7/10 (9 November 2014)

Reviewed by: Dare Devil Kid (DDK)
Rating: 3.3/5 stars
The first thing that you notice inn "Fury" is the mud. Even more than the copious blood and violence, it represents the defining visual element of "Fury". It's everywhere. Feet are caked with it. Tires and treads churn it under. Roads - if they can be called that - are paved with it. Rarely has a World War II film depicted just how filthy everything was during the 1945 slog across Germany's rural country on the race to Berlin. If writer/director David Ayer is to be credited with nothing else, he gets this right, illustrating that, unlike what's shown in less historically exacting war films, the final push for the Allies was no post-D-Day picnic.
Tanks have featured in countless war movies yet rarely been the focus of those films. Slow, hulking and claustrophobic, they lack the 'glamour' of planes, the scale of battleships and the vulnerability of the lone soldier. Two rare exceptions are 1943's "Sahara" and 1988's "The Beast of War", both of which centered on lone tank crews bravely engaging the enemy against seemingly impossible odds. In that vein, "Fury" is a fitting new addition. In the closing stages of the Second World War, a single US Sherman M4 tank (baring the nickname from which the film takes its title), is tasked with holding a vital crossroads deep behind German lines. Led by their tough-as-nails sergeant, "Wardaddy" Don Collier (Brad Pitt), the crew includes Bible-thumping Boyd Swan (Shia LaBeouf), pugnacious Grady Travis (Jon Bernthal), and immigrant Gordo Garcia (Michael Pena) - a hardened bunch of veterans who do not take kindly to their new, fresh-faced draftee, Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman), whose mobile armored experience consists of knowing how to operate a typewriter. The fifth seat in the tank, tragically vacated, is filled by this typist-turned-gunner/driver, who is as unenthused about being with the four as they are about having him there.
Norman's initiation is quick and uncompromising. His first job is to wipe down the tank's interior and scrub away the fleshy remains of his predecessor. Then its straight into action, where the true horrors of the conflict are seen, felt and heard all around. One thing "Fury" does exceptionally well is demonstrate precisely how devastating a tank was to anything less than another one (unless that other one was the German "Tiger", whose forward-facing armor made it invulnerable to all US counterparts). "Ideals are peaceful", explains Wardaddy, "history is violent", and the sound of enemy shells tearing holes through the sky as they blaze past or into the American units is a terrifyingly violent experience.
Indeed, all the combat scenes in "Fury" are brutally graphic, offering a "Saving Private Ryan" level of gruesome reality to the war experience, even if the film as a whole fall slightly short of meeting the lofty standards of Spielberg's ultimate war classic. Bodies are burned, shredded and liquefied, yet what truly startles is the matter-of-factness with which the other soldiers regard it all. This is the final stage of the conflict, remember, by which time most troops had experienced years of dehumanizing savagery. "It's just war!" one of them explains to Norman, whose revulsion to the death around him is neatly reflective of the audience's.
Brad Pitt's Don is a toned-down version of the memorable character he played in Quentin Tarantino's "Inglorious Bastards". Though this role might not have the same impact as the Tarantino-scripted one, it's still noteworthy for portraying Don to be just as determined and uncompromising but far less gung-ho. He lives by a code of honor with principle #1 being to keep his men alive and principle #2 follows Patton's directive about killing Nazis. In particular, he has no sympathy for the SS. The only good one is a dead one, and it doesn't matter if he has surrendered. Pitt is more than believable in this role, and completely vanishes into the character. His performance is genuinely affecting - barking orders, maintaining camaraderie, and at times being brutal to the point of risking real inhumanity, as when he forces Norman to shoot a captured German soldier in the back just to give him the experience of doling out death. Yet there are other moments when he is able to shed that horrible armor for just a few minutes, and convey a man who is terribly frightened, not only of his own possible death, but of what he may have become in keeping himself and the others alive. Logan Lerman doesn't have Pitt's screen presence, but he fills the role of the clerk-turned-warrior capably. His character has the longest and most extreme arc. Shia LaBeouf, who may or may not retire from acting after this performance, fulfills the promise that once had Hollywood insiders predicting great things from him. Michael Pena and Jon Bernthal ably fill out the quintet.
David Ayer has directed a work that moves with a cinematic force; even grace. It is a difficult film to discount. From the vivid, fluid photography (Roman Vasyanov) to the mournful and muscular score (Steven Price), "Fury" is irrefutably crafted. Over two hours long it is tense going, a sturdily acted affair, and yet, as the author of this drama, Ayer has penned a work that takes us no place new, or illuminating, or even exciting, but what it does manage to do is give us a brutally realistic war film. "Fury" is a war movie as much as an anti-war movie, with an emphasis on the horrors of war, and which minimizes the heroic aspects of being a soldier. In this film, war really is hell.