Movie Review: Fury

Fury (2014)


April, 1945. As the Allies make their final push in the European Theatre, a battle-hardened army sergeant named Wardaddy commands a Sherman tank and his five-man crew on a deadly mission behind enemy lines. Out-numbered, out-gunned, and with a rookie soldier thrust into their platoon, Wardaddy and his men face overwhelming odds in their heroic attempts to strike at the heart of Nazi Germany.  Short synopsis of Fury taken from IMDb.com

You know, I wanted Fury to be based on real events.  I'm not sure if it is, though I have heard of circumstances that are similar.  But the movie is so visceral and unrelenting, I kinda wanted it to have more than a passing touch of reality to go from. 

For those who haven't seen Fury yet and could use a brief overview (but more detailed than the synopsis from IMDb.com), this film stars Brad Pitt as "Wardaddy," a grizzled tank commander in the closing days of World War II in Europe.  The Nazis have pulled every last person into the fight that they can lay hands on, which is now primarily children and old men.  It's remorselessly gruesome, this stage of the war, and more true to what really happened than most people would care to linger on.

The practice of troops riding embarked on armored vehicles has been around since probably not long after the tank was invented during World War I.  It is in part the reason for the invention of armored personnel carriers in the later half of the twentieth century, though many soldiers in parts of the world still prefer to ride on the vehicle, rather than inside it, when possible. / Source: Britannica.com

The film follows the relationship between Pitt's character "Wardaddy" (his "war name") and his tank's new waist gunner, by the name of Norman, played by Logan Lerman.  Shia LaBeouf, Michael Pena and Jon Bernthal round out the M4 Sherman tank's crew.  They are really putting their all into this, both the guys being played and the actors who are playing them.  Pitt's Wardaddy is relentless and cold, and yet there is enough humanity left in him to make him sympathetic.  Lerman does only eight weeks in the army to a "T," and you feel through him what it must have been like to be thrown into the most devastating conflict in human history, like a child set loose among wolves.  LaBeouf, Pena and Bernthal all do "hard men" very well.  These are not just soldiers, these are professional killers who have all lost their humanity, to greater or lesser extent.  LaBeouf is especially good in his role as "Bible," the tank's religious sort.  But the role, which could have been overly stereotypical, really takes LaBeouf into places that I'd not have thought him capable, and shows that they guy must have some acting chops, despite the roles he has usually filled in the past (Transformers, I'm looking your way).

The whole movie drives forward passionately from one moment to the next.  In many ways, it's like an old-fashioned war movie.  I refer to films in which the good guys are good, though they be flawed, and the bad guys are bad, though not always, and the action is the edge-of-your-seat sort, though not seeming gratuitous as you might see in a truly made up tale.  For example, I found some of the sequences in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and what I've seen so far of the follow-on Hobbit trilogy to be almost tailor-cut from the cloth of "trying to get your blood pumping" with its depiction of warfare.  Sure, that sort of thing has moments that are enjoyable, but to me, so much of those particular films goes tone-deaf after you've seen one more orc get an arrow in the face (Hobbit trilogy especially, I'm looking at you). 

But the events in Fury?  Well the things seen here really happened.  And when it is being played to the audience for thrills, it is doing it with hard and fast historical precedent on its side.  Sherman tanks engaged in many of the same actions that are seen in the film, including white-knuckle duels with Tiger tanks, in which often the American vehicles were at a major disadvantage.  The United States was not militarily the most advanced nation on Earth at the beginning of World War II, which is something the current generation often takes for granted.

The film makes the interior of the tank look a bit more spacious than was really the case.  The inside of any tank is a cramped affair, often poorly ventilated and with moving parts that can cause serious injury under normal operation, let alone int he heat of actual combat. / Source: gopixpic.com

What else to say?  There are three last parts of the film to dwell on, and then I'll leave my final thoughts for you, dear reader.  Regarding the first part, there is a segment in which the U.S. forces have captured another town, and are resting on their laurels, so to speak.  Most of our tank crew gets drunk and starts whoring with some local women.  Wardaddy (Pitt) and Norman (Lerman) go up to a second story flat where they meet a woman who is trying to hide her niece from being seen by the Americans.  The young woman is quite beautiful (though in my opinion her skirt length was incorrect for the time period), and as any sensible person would probably do, the older woman is trying to protect the younger from being taken off an brutalized. 

Wardaddy and Norman spend time with the women, and if not completely respectful, are at least civil to them.  There is some implied sex here, as the niece and Norman go off together, but it is handled with enough decency to not annoy me (gratuitous sex tends to do that, as I have rarely seen a film use it that couldn't have just implied it well and been just fine for it).

The segment then turns tense when the rest of the tank crew come upstairs to see what is going on, and begin tormenting both the women and Norman.  This scene could have become very ugly.  As it stands, it is terrifically uncomfortable, and tells the audience more than they wanted to know about what the war has done to all these people.  But thankfully, the film makers do a good job of walking a tight rope here and leave us feeling sympathy for most of the characters involved, and coincidentally feeling the pain that war can bring, both in the long drawn out ways and also in the instantaneous moments of loss.

Pictured here is a German refugee from the war zone, in March or April of 1945.  World War II destroyed Germany itself in a way that World War I never did.  Without the Marshal plan, it would have taken much of Europe decades to rebuild, and might have left the area an easier target for Soviet expansionism, under Joseph Stalin, in the late '40s and 1950s. / Source: crooksandliars.com

Another segment prior to the one just described deserves some mention.  The U.S. forces have just mopped up a group of German soldiers on the edge of a field, and one of the Nazi soldiers is captured wearing a stolen U.S. field coat.  Wardaddy takes Norman bodily, having just told him that he is not doing his job, and physically forces Norman to execute the German prisoner.  This is gut-wrenching.  Not much more I can say about it.  On the one hand, your humanity says: "how could anyone do that to another person?," and on the other, you realize at some level that this is part of what these men have become, in their efforts to fight and to survive.

However, without the segment in the town which I previously described, in which we see Pitt's character's humanity, you'd be convinced that this Wardaddy is as bad as any Nazi he is killing in battle.  The filmmakers did a fairly good job of portraying a more complex person with these two interlocking segments, and for the audience...  well you know you're being suckered into feeling things for these make-believe characters, but in my case, I didn't mind.  I thought it was well done.

One last segment of the film I wanted to mention.  The film ends with a climactic fight between a German unit of SS soldiers (the best of the worst of the Nazi troops) against our lone Sherman tank and crew.  This part had me gritting my teeth and wanting to duck throughout most of it.  The intensity level is up to eleven.  And yes, it does feel a bit Hollywood in places, especially when the German sniper lines up his sights on one of our protagonists (like this part came out of the "how do you kill off a hero and make the audience feel it all the way through"-book).  But you know, I don't care.  It was so dang cool, and poignant, and...  my warmonger side (some would say a side too well indulged, I know) wanted to jump up during this part and holler: "Yeah!  Get them Nazi's!"  And honestly, I bet I am far from the only one who felt that way.

So that's it.  All I can say is that I thought Fury was well worth the cheap seats price and the time spent going.  It did seem like a bit of a long film.  Two and a half hours or so, I'd bet.  As for content...  This is a full scale "R" rated feature.  The language is blunt and coarse, the violence is merciless and gruesome, and the subject matter is not appropriate, in my estimation, for teens/kids.  But if you like war movies, and you can stomach the strong - though in my opinion not over-the-top content - you may really like Fury.  Even with its semi-cliche ending, and its stark brutality, I still did.  For what that is worth.


The parting comment:


From gritty violence and realism, to gritty comedy and satire.  Oh, and for your info, there is actually a film out there called McBain.  I think it is a '70s low-budget action flick.  Will have to hunt it up on the Internet, watch it, and review sometime.  Can't be as good as The Simpsons parody of 80s movies though.  Good stuff, and thanks to whoever took the time to tease this out of the episodes.