In his latest film, “Fury,” writer and director David Ayer (“End of Watch”) explores familiar war-movie territory: the brotherly bonds of soldiers in combat. While a few questionable directing decisions disrupt the tone of the 134 minute affair, Ayer pulls off an affecting WWII drama due to compelling acting on all fronts and religiously-charged cinematography that combine to subvert the prevalent war-movie stereotypes.
The film begins in 1945 Germany, as the Allies make one final push to clinch victory over the Nazi forces. Brad Pitt plays Don ‘Wardaddy’ Collier, a paternal tank-commander with the heavy burden of his soldiers’ lives upon his scarred shoulders, while big-name actors like Shia LaBeouf, Michael Peña, and Jon Bernthal fill out the cast. Logan Lerman portrays the naive Norman Ellison, a typist forced into front-lines combat with little training. The emotional tension of the film rests firmly in the dynamic between Ellison and Collier, while the plot follows an American tank, named ‘Fury’ by its crew, as it battles through Germany against the technologically superior Nazi tanks, ending in an overtly-heroic sequence taking place at a rural intersection that evokes religious imagery.
Ayer nails his tone from the opening shot when Collier wrestles to the ground and brutalizes a Nazi commander riding a white horse through a field of burnt-out tank carcasses. It’s a poignant scene that establishes the film’s intentionally dirty color palate while painting Pitt’s character as a tormented soul broken by the horrors of war. Collier returns to his tank and together the crew leaves as the sole survivors of the conflict. We learn that the tank, ‘Fury,’ has lived through many such engagements in no small part due to Collier’s no-man-left-behind attitude. When Ellison joins the squad, the group is afraid his inexperience will lead to all of their deaths.
Lerman, playing the narrative centerpiece of the film, delivers a transformative performance. We see him break his pretty-boy typecast as he grows throughout the course of the film from hesitant to heroic under the harsh tutelage of ‘Wardaddy’ Collier and the teasing of Grady ‘Koon-Ass’ Travis (Bernthal). Pitt gives a characteristically strong performance when we see silent torment in Collier’s eyes, who is simultaneously reminiscent of both a Christ-figure and a mad-man. But Travis, Swan (LaBeouf), and Garcia (Peña) all contribute to Ellison’s transformation. Seeing Swan, a scripture-reciting Christian, praying over dead bodies at the end of a battle is especially moving.
The cinematography consistently incorporates slow-pans and zooms around the word ‘Fury’ painted on the cannon of the tank to emphasize the brotherhood of the soldiers. Tension builds through methodical battles by juxtaposing the danger of war with the safety of the tank, like in a high-point of action when ‘Fury’ stands its ground against a stronger German tank. By the third act, the squad becomes one with each other and with the tank as Ellison proves his worth as a soldier.
The film stumbles when the soldiers stop in a neutral German town and they interact with the German women. The scene gives character development for the main crew, but the foreigners ultimately prove expendable and are written off as cheap plot-devices rather than actual characters, which sullies the dramatic tone. And, even though conclusion is affecting in its own right, it feels gratuitously heroic when compared to the dark atmosphere of the rest of the film. A few key post-climax moments, however, tie the ending to the beginning in a way that makes the whole endeavor feel complete.
While ‘Fury’ does take a few missteps, the majority of the film feels cohesive and properly emotional, with many scenes—including a final aerial shot of the climactic battle—haunting us long after the fade to black.