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Rating: R
Director: David Ayer
Writers: David Ayer
Stars: Brad Pitt, Shia LeBeouf, Logan Lerman
Release Date: October 17, 2014 (United States)
Run time: 2 hours, 14 minutes
THE PLOT:
via wiki:
In April 1945, the Western Allied invasion of Germany encounters strong resistance. Don “Wardaddy” Collier, a battle-hardened US Army Staff Sergeant in the U.S. Second Armored Division, commands an M4 Sherman nicknamed Fury, whose crew—consisting of gunner Boyd “Bible” Swan, loader Grady “Coon-Ass” Travis, driver Trini “Gordo” Garcia, and assistant driver–bow gunner “Red”—have been together since the North African campaign. After Red is killed in a tank battle, he is replaced by Private First Class Norman Ellison, a young typist clerk from V Corps.
As Fury moves deeper into Germany, the crew disdains Norman for his lack of combat experience and aversion to violence. While moving in a tank convoy, he spots but does not fire upon a group of concealed Hitler Youth child-soldiers, who ambush the tank column with a Panzerfaust and destroy the lead tank, killing the platoon leader and his crew. Don furiously blames Norman for their loss, and Fury assumes command of the tank column.
Later, while in a battle, Norman hesitates under fire from anti-tank guns. After the battle, Don orders Norman to execute a captured German soldier. When he refuses, Don wrestles his revolver into Norman’s hand and forces him to pull the trigger, killing the soldier and traumatizing Norman.
After capturing Kirchohsen, Don and Norman search an apartment and find two German women, Irma and Emma, hiding. Don provides supplies, and the women prepare a meal and hot water for a shave. As they bond, Norman and Emma retreat to the bedroom and have sex, prompted by Don. Later, during dinner, Fury’s crew drunkenly enters, harassing the women and bullying Norman, leading to a standoff with Don before an urgent mission calls them away. German artillery strikes the town, killing Emma and causing Norman to suffer a breakdown.
The four tank crews receive orders to hold a vital crossroads to protect the division’s vulnerable rear lines. En route, a lone German Tiger I ambushes and destroys the other three tanks before being defeated by Fury. The radio gets damaged in the battle, preventing Don from calling for reinforcements. Don decides that he and his crew must continue the mission alone. When they arrive at the crossroads, Fury is immobilized by a landmine. While the tank is being repaired, Don sends Norman to scout a nearby hill, where he spots a Waffen-SS battalion approaching Fury‘s position. The crew plans to retreat, but Don insists on staying and tells the others to leave. After Norman elects to stay with Don, the others ultimately stay on as well.
The men disguise Fury to make it seem destroyed and hide inside. While they wait to make their last stand, they exchange Bible verses, and Norman earns the nickname “Machine” as the crew shows their support for him. When the Waffen-SS battalion arrives, the crew ambushes them, inflicting heavy casualties. As a fierce and drawn-out battle unfolds, Grady is killed by a Panzerfaust shot that penetrates the turret; Gordo is shot while unpinning a grenade and falls back into the tank with it, sacrificing himself by shielding it with his body as it explodes; and Bible is shot dead by a German sniper. Don is wounded by the sniper and retreats into the tank. Out of ammunition and surrounded, Norman contemplates surrendering, but Don tells him he will be tortured by the Germans, and directs him to escape through the floor hatch as the Germans drop grenades into the tank. Norman slips out just before they explode, killing Don. As he tries to hide underneath the tank, Norman is spotted by a young Waffen-SS soldier, who spares him and moves on without alerting his battalion.
The next morning, Norman crawls back into the tank and mourns over Don’s corpse before covering him with his jacket. Hearing someone climbing Fury, Norman takes Don’s revolver and prepares to fight, but finds they are U.S. Army soldiers. Norman is praised as a hero as combat medics help him to an ambulance, where he watches an American column advance past Fury‘s wreck, surrounded by dozens of dead Waffen-SS soldiers.
My Review
Fury is a pretty formulaic war movie. It features a cast of almost comedically diverse personalities who learn after some adversity to work well with the new recruit, and it’s about a hard-nosed commander who is deeper and more caring than he seems. It focuses on Norman, who is thrown into the fire of a war that is almost won, despite being untrained for the role he is assigned. The bad guys are the Nazis. You’ll feel like you’ve seen this movie before, even if you haven’t. But the formula exists for a reason and Fury executes it extremely well.
The biggest strength of the movie is its acting performances. Brad Pitt is incredible as Don ‘Wardaddy’ Collier, believably imbuing his character with an almost psychotic-seeming ferocity and also a depth and intelligence capable of reaching each of the men under his command where they are, and then bringing them together.
I particularly enjoyed – from the standpoint of being impressed by Pitt’s acting – the scene wherein Don finds the German women hiding and then partially protects them. The scene was a microcosm of the war itself. Don creates a veneer of civility, respect, and politeness while also ordering a violation. He more or less orders Norman to have sex with one of the two women, Emma. However you want to look at it, that was an order to rape her. Don understood that this was the best case scenario for the women. Norman’s innocence, hesitance, and sincerity made the experience as good as it could be for Emma, who almost seemed to take the lead with the young soldier. Don gave the women the illusion that their actions were civil and voluntary, because the other men in the camp would not have done so. Pitt communicates a LOT in this scene, non-verbally, and it’s genuinely impressive.
The scene with the German women ended up mirroring the war itself. Don and his men do a lot that would seem horrific, in a vacuum, but in the context of the hell in which they exist you reflect back on the fighting as the best and most civil of nothing but awful options. The scene even ends with the women dying after German artillery fire hits their location and leaves the audience wondering whether what Pitt’s Don just did to them / for them even matters, or whether it matters immensely. It’s a challenging bit of morally relativistic story-telling that I enjoyed wrestling with as a viewer. It took an elite actor like Pitt to present that challenge to the audience.
Shia LeBeouf was great as Boyd ‘Bible’ Swan. Like a lot of people in the acting industry, he has had some very public personal strife play out in the media. However, he’s always been a master of his craft and I’ve enjoyed his transformation from primarily comedy to drama.
The clip below is probably my favorite scene in the movie and LeBeouf delivers it.
LeBeouf gives those really powerful lines, and then Pitt just steals the scene right back from him, letting ‘Bible’ and the audience know for the first time that Don also knows the Scriptures well. It’s not part of the clip above, but LeBeouf’s character breaks the tension by laughing. It’s a great scene between two very talented actors.
Logan Lerman played Norman, the fish out of water. In a lot of ways, he had the hardest acting job in the film. He had to sell me on the idea that Norman could become a fully integrated member of the group. That was a tall task but I think he succeeded. When we meet Norman, he’s a typist who can’t bring himself to kill anyone. In what might have been the most uncomfortable scene in the movie, Pitt’s Don forces the idealistic Norman, against his will, to kill a German soldier by shooting him in the back. Norman has one of what ends up being multiple mental breakdowns after. By the end of the movie, he’s one of the guys. I’m not sure how it happened, but it was gradual and extremely well-acted.
It’s hard to say that a grim war movie is “beautiful” but Fury‘s cinematography, costuming, and general aesthetic was immersive. Everything looked and felt real. The musical scoring also did its job well, always adding to the scene and never distracting from it.
If I were to say that the movie has a weakness, it’s that it lacks any moments of either soaring hope or deep despair. I watched this and felt like it was beating me up emotionally but I never had a stand up and cheer or a sit down and cover my face type of moment. Fury isn’t that kind of movie. There was never a desperately necessary goal to attain, against impossible odds, or any loss that felt unexpected. You know early in the movie that the Allies are on the verge of winning the war. The big picture stakes – relatively speaking – are low. The men fighting want to live, though. The point of the film is the journey, within that context.
Ayers’ film is a psychological film with a war backdrop. It’s an exploration of how diverse people can be forced to fit together, in pursuit of a goal, and about making decisions within the gray areas of right and wrong. I think the screenplay, had it done those things and also given the audience a do-or-die goal to be met, too, might have provided some stronger emotional ups and downs for the story. However, it would have lost something in its message, too. Most of the time, in war, you’re not charging down the hill at Helm’s Deep. You’re doing a very dangerous job, wherein your individual success or failure might not ultimately matter in the bigger picture. “If we don’t take this hill, the world ends” is a different story than “if we don’t take this hill, we’ll die, and the guys behind us will take it.” The stakes for that second story might be lower, to the world, but they are plenty high for the men involved. That second story is worth telling, too. Those deaths are no less heroic. Their decisions are no less difficult.
Overall, I’m glad I watched Fury. It’s worth seeing for the acting performances and for its gritty visual realism. I don’t know that a civilian can really ever understand what someone who fights goes through, but a civilian should feel obligated to try, such that they don’t take their governments sending men to fight and die lightly. Fury does not sugar-coat war – even one where history tells us the delineation between good guys and bad guys is quite clear. This isn’t the kind of movie I’d want to watch often, but it’s well-made, well-acted, and it’s worth seeing.
Have you seen Fury? If so, what did you think?
