Fury
During WW2, a team of battle fatigued soldiers have been together for years.
They, command an M4 Sherman tank under the leadership of Lt Don Collier. They are given a series of orders which they perform willingly.
When they suffer a devastating loss, they are given a new team member; Norman who they instantly despise due to his limited wartime experience.
As the weeks go on, their missions become more deadly – and one may soon be their last…
Direction
Directed by David Ayer (who also wrote), the ‘1940s’ aesthetic is somewhat weaker compared to other films set in the same era (SPR, TRL etc).
I didn’t care for the “star wars” like gun-play, and was not sure why they took this artistic direction. It took away from the realism of what should have been significant battles.
The choreography of the battle sequences are solid – especially with some of the “one on one” tank sequences.
Cast/Characters
Like most wartime movies, this has a stacked cast.
Brad Pitt plays Don Collier, the leader of the team – who travel in the M4 tank Fury. He is fine here, but at no time did I really believe his performance.
In my opinion, he seemed to almost sleepwalk through the role, and its actually one of his weakest performances (despite him being one of my top 5 actors of all time). This is far weaker than his previous wartime film Inglorious Basterds.
Shia LaBeuof plays Boyd “Bible” Swan, one of Collier’s longest team members, who often struggles with the horrors of war, and is always at the ready with his christian advice and bible verse. This is another performance that proves he is a sound actor, and has strong talent.
Jon Bernthal plays Grady Travis, a war hardened team member who takes an instant dislike to Ellison. His disdain and almost childlike approach to this is unlike anything I have seen in other wartime films.
Michael Pena plays Garcia.
Logan Lerman plays Norman Ellison, the newest member of Collier’s team. He has limited wartime experience, and has more empathy than his new team members, struggling to take a life at first.
Several co stars of importance are Jim Parrack, (the late) Brad William Henke, Anamaria Marinca, Alicia von Rittberg, Scott Eastwood and Jason Isaacs.
Breakdown
I went in to this hoping for something wonderful, and having seen such rage reviews… I honestly didn’t see the hype. Not to say this wasn’t a good war film… there have just been so many better ones before it.
First I want to add that all of the cast did a great job – I just didn’t grasp the feelings from them that Ayer was trying to instill. He writes good banter between the team, as well as showing a team of men who are both battle fatigued and hardened by the fragility of war.
Pitt’s Collier and his team are battle hardened, often letting those around them know they’ve been ‘together since Africa’ which suggests a 3-5 year team. They’ve just lost one of their (drivers?) and have been assigned the rookie Ellison. He is more empathetic, with his dual linguistic and educated writing type (almost similar to Upham in SPR).
Not long after we meet Collier, he has his one (and only) moment of ‘war fatigue’. Considering what we see before hand and after, this seems out of place.
He cannot kill, and this infuriates his team – to the point Collier forces him to ‘kill’ an unarmed German early on. His change of heart is quite drastic, and his ‘ease to kill’ comes too rapidly. It’s not written well. It is too sudden.
The rest of the team, and I’ll refer to them as their actors (LaBeouf, Pena, and Berntal) are all played well enough (in fact this is yet another performance that LeBeouf should be proud of, and give a middle finger to anyone who says he cannot act).
They are rather cliched in the way they are written. The religious one, the one that hates everyone. They have good banter, but there is not really enough character developemnt of them, so when they (spoiler) die – we have the right amount of mourning for them. The ‘ease’ of which how each of them are killed, are brutal… and quite realistic.
There are some terrific scenes within, including one of the most awkward meals in cinema history following the (Norman/Emma) sequence.
Whether what occurs to Emma is the reason that Norman breaks and is able to finally become one of the team (even getting the respect from Travis – which felt completely out of character and added to give his character more depth) is intentional is up for debate. The moments with Emma, do give us the only real peace from the wartime. I found the piano time between the two quite sweet, and it was devastating when she is killed just moments later.
The final battle, where all the men stay to fight, did add too much forced emotion. The ‘unwinnable’ battle (which takes all the lives except for Norman) adds the Pyrrhic victory for Norman. Had we gotten “something” of him after the war then this would have made more sense for him to have survived, instead of those around him.
I absolutely loved the score that underplays under the action. It all works very well for the scenes within. Great job Steven Price.
Overall
This felt too cliche with all that went on, and never felt authentic or new. While the performances were mostly top tier, it never felt original enough to stand on its own.
A strong film, but nowhere near as good as I wanted it to be.
3.5/5
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