Review #844: 'Fury' (2014)

It's highly likely that David Ayer's Fury will conjure memories of Saving Private Ryan (1998). It will also bring to mind The Wild Geese (1978), The Dirty Dozen (1967), and just about every World War II movie ever made. It's also hard to shake off the idea that Brad Pitt is not playing Aldo Raine, his drawling, neck-scarred leader of a band of Nazi hunters in Quentin Tarantino's excellent Inglourious Basterds (2009). Although Fury is certainly not lacking in spectacle and decent performances, it just doesn't come up with any ideas of its own, stumbling along a wafer-thin narrative and getting lost on its way to try and figure out what type of film it wants to be.

We are in the climatic days of the war, with the U.S. deep into Germany territory, and the crew of 'Fury', an M4A3E8 Sherman tank, long battle-worn. Don 'Wardaddy' Collier (Pitt) is a hard man (we first meet him knocking a German soldier from his horse and stabbing him to death), but he struggles dealing with the horrors he has witnessed. With a crew member dead in their latest fight, rookie Norman (Logan Lerman), a kid who has never fired a gun or experienced combat, is plucked from his typing duties and thrown into Fury. The crew, consisting of bible-bashing gunner, er, Bible (Shia LaBeouf), token Hispanic driver Gordo Garcia (Michael Pena), and scumbag mechanic Coon-Ass (Jon Bernthal), don't take too kindly to the new arrival.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about Fury is that it hints at potential brilliance. The underlying theme seems to be that war turns men into animals, and in one stand-out scene in which Wardaddy takes Norman into the home of two German women so he can lose his virginity, only to be interrupted by his crew and a drunken, vulgar Coon-Ass, manages to create an atmosphere of tension and discomfort. The battle scenes look very impressive too. Bullets fly across the screen like lasers, and one set-piece involving a squad of Sherman facing a superior German Tiger tank is exciting, but the film is often too eager to revel in gore and flying body parts.

Fury spends so much time giving us blood, guts and loud noises that it forgets to give us any resemblance of a plot to hang onto. It also gets so lost in trying to hammer home how damaged these men have become than it doesn't allow us to get to know the characters on any deeper level than their primary personality trait, ticking off a check-list of war movie cliches on its way. It all builds up to a ridiculous climax that pitches Fury against a 300-strong company of SS panzergrenadiers, who all proceed to jog gleefully into a hail of machine-gun fire like many a faceless video game baddie. It manages to insult both the German army and the audience's intelligence. We are given little to make us sympathise with the Americans apart from the fact that they aren't Nazi's, so come the emotions at the end, it's difficult to care at all.


Directed by: David Ayer
Starring: Brad Pitt, Logan Lerman, Shia LaBeouf, Michael Peña, Jon Bernthal
Country: USA/China/UK

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie