Fury (2014)
Certified: 15
Duration: 134 minutes
Directed by: David Ayer
Starring: Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Michael Peña, Jon Bernthal, Jason Isaacs, Scott Eastwood
KRS Releasing Ltd
Fury sees Brad Pitt taking on the Nazis once again. The film is set in April 1945, at the closing stages of World War II. Pitt is Sgt Don Collier, nicknamed Warddaddy, who is the leader of a Sherman tank and its crew.
The latter is made up of gunner Boyd Swan (Shia LaBeouf), loader Grady Travis (Jon Bernthal) and driver Trini Garcia aka Gordo (Michael Peña). The team, which has been together since the North African campaign, is a close-knit band of veterans and when they lose the assistant driver and machine gunner, they are not happy at all when his replacement turns out not to be a veteran like them.
Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman) is a wet-behind-the-ears recruit. He was a desk jockey rather than trained for tank warfare. Captain Waggoner (Jason Isaacs) orders Don and his crew forward and Norman shows how green he is during an ambush because he cannot bring himself to shoot at the enemy. So Don forces him to make his first kill.
While out on the mission, the crew enters a German town and meet two German women (Anamaria Marinca and Alicia Von Ritterberg) that lead to some issues. Norman’s presence seems to cause friction among the team. Soon Don and the others get a mission to take a tank called Fury to an intersection where they could be the only solution in stopping a German advance.
Fury is a brilliant piece of film-making. It’s an unabashed war movie that is not afraid to dirty its hands. In many ways it reminds me of Saving Private Ryan but without Tom Hanks’s idealistic figure.
Fury has all the necessary mud and blood, all coated with a veneer of violence
This films specialises in tank warfare, gives this feeling of being in a tank, the high and low of driving such a beast and the dangers that the battlefield posed to it. Director David Ayers captures the idea and the essence of the tank and at the same time brings to the screen the sense of camaraderie and belonging that this close-knit group of men have.
Fury brings to the fore the feeling of being in a war, a sense of tangible danger and fatalistic realism. It does not strive to retell history or bring anything new, it just places us into the scene and the audience will be left charred for the duration of the viewing for this. There is no encompassing scope to all this except survival and doing right by your comrades and this in itself encapsulates perfectly the idea of being at war.
It’s also interesting to see how war changes these men and transforms them into something else. Pitt delivers a performance that is committed and human and I can expect he will be rewarded by an Academy Award nomination.
LaBeouf is better than he has been in recent years, while Lerman undergoes a transformation on screen that is gripping and haunting.
Fury also sports an impeccable sense of cinematography that makes for a very realistic-looking film. In terms of action, it is gritty, well choreographed and places the audience straight in the midst of all the turmoil.
The film is evidently striving for authenticity and credibility. It’s one of the few times that an actual Tiger Tank has been used in a film and the effect is devastating. Fury has all the necessary mud and blood, all coated with a veneer of violence.