Film review: Fury conveys the horror of war
It's hard to forget the title of David Ayer's second world war movie as it's painted in thick white letters on the barrel of a Sherman tank. "Fury" is not just the nickname of the metal beast commanded by Brad Pitt's sergeant — it also seems to be the directorial style with which Ayer approaches this most intense of anti-war films.
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Starring: Brad Pitt, Logan Lerman, Shia LaBeouf, Michael Peña, Jon Bernthal
Director: David Ayer
Category: IIB
It's hard to forget the title of David Ayer's second world war movie as it's painted in thick white letters on the barrel of a Sherman tank. "Fury" is not just the nickname of the metal beast commanded by Brad Pitt's sergeant — it also seems to be the directorial style with which Ayer approaches this most intense of anti-war films.
Like on wheels, it's set in April 1945, as the Allies rumble across a tumultuous Germany — the people either desperate to surrender or engaged, as the pre-titles tell us, in "fanatic resistance".
An early scene backs this up, as "Fury" comes under fire from a pocket of Nazi youth. This is just a brief introduction to the shocking scenes Ayer has in store.
Pitt, with an attitude as severe as his short back and sides haircut, plays Sergeant Don "Wardaddy" Collier, a veteran who has already fought the Germans in North Africa. Within minutes, he's skewering a Nazi in the eye. "Ideals are peaceful," he later explains. "History is violent."
The worry is that Ayer might turn into gung-ho jingoism ("This is an American tank," says Wardaddy. "We speak American.") But in sprinkling the grit that he employed on his scripts for corrupt cop dramas and , the writer-director shows he has no wish to wave the Stars and Stripes.
Never mind the Allies' impending victory — this is a war movie in which there are no winners, just survivors. And Pitt's character has made it this far with barely a scratch, recalling Robert Duvall's Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore in .
While Pitt might headline the film, he's not the lead, emotionally speaking. That really belongs to Logan Lerman, who plays Norman Ellison, a rookie recruit reluctantly sent along for the ride. Norman's never killed before, until Wardaddy puts a gun in his hand and forces him to pull the trigger.
Watching the conflict through his eyes, we experience a journey from innocence to horrific experience — one that Lerman (who already made an impression this year in ) conveys admirably.
Shunted into this claustrophobic killing machine, he has no choice but to override his morals. Alongside him are three long-serving soldiers, played by Shia LaBeouf, Jon Bernthal and Michael Peña (who starred in Ayer's 2012 police drama ).
You get the impression these battle-scarred grunts would lay down their lives for Wardaddy, though a crux scene at the film's halfway point involving two German girls discovered hiding in a house shows their baser instincts.
is not for the faint-hearted; it's grim, muddy, dirty, violent and bloody. You can practically smell the rotting copses being bulldozed into ditches here.
Some will claim it's gratuitous and they may have a point. But Ayer conveys the sheer horror of war with a brilliant immediacy. It's as relentless as cinema gets.
