Writer-director David Ayer makes no bones about his overarching goal with his new World War II action film, “Fury”: to nail the realism of armored combat in that conflict.
He succeeds brilliantly. Whether it’s a tanker getting his head ripped off by a flying shell, a couple of screaming troops staggering out of a barn with their bodies ablaze from white phosphorous rounds, or an enemy soldier getting bayoneted in the face, “Fury” is about as real as a combat movie can get.
But a question Ayer never really answers is: What’s the point? If one exists beyond the notion that war is the most dehumanizing of human endeavors — hardly a news flash — Ayer hides it well.
I’m far from a shrinking violet on movie violence. But in a war film, extreme combat carnage needs to fit into a broader narrative purpose, as did the hair-raising Normandy Beach scene in “Saving Private Ryan” (for me, still far and away the most harrowing and thrilling World War II combat scene ever put on film).
That’s not the case in “Fury,” which sports a theme simplistic enough to border on cliché: A raw recruit straight out of boot camp gets thrown in with a bunch of crusty, grizzled combat vets. Like they did long before, the neophyte must shed all vestiges of his humanity and bring forth his inner savage in order to stay alive in this charnel house.
Two things give the film sufficient novelty to keep it interesting: its tank warfare motif, which Ayer uses to great claustrophobic effect; and the specific time frame in which it’s set, the very tail end of the conflict.
It’s April 1945. The Reich is collapsing in on itself, and Allied troops have penetrated deep into the Fatherland. But while it’s clearly the ninth inning, pockets of German forces fanatically fight on — producing a jittery, gut-churning anxiousness among the U.S. troops who recognize that surviving this hell for as long as they have only to take a fatal bullet now would constitute the ultimate cosmic FUBAR.
The film opens on an early morning. A German officer on horseback strolling through the smoking wreckage of a recent tank battle gets jumped by an American GI hiding in the rubble. After dispatching his foe in three bloody seconds, the soldier gently lets the horse run free.
This is Staff Sgt. Don “Wardaddy” Collier (Brad Pitt), crew leader of an M4 Sherman tank nicknamed “Fury” — a hard-case NCO formed of a unique fusion of granite, steel, foul temper and extra-large cojones.
“I thought you were dead,” another noncom says when Wardaddy gets back to base camp.
“Devil looks after his own,” Wardaddy drawls. (He’s a font of such macabre aphorisms: “Ideals are peaceful, history is violent”; “It’ll end soon, but before it does, a lot more people have to die.”)
His crew includes gunner Boyd Swan (Shia LaBeouf), their nominal spiritual conscience; ace driver Trini Garcia (Michael Pena); and loader Grady Travis (Jon Bernthal), the crude, annoying simpleton in every small unit since the dawn of warfare.
The boys have been together “since Africa,” which implies late 1942 — a continuous 2½-year slog that has left them strung out and wired tight, living moment to moment with no moral compass in a deep sea of filth, blood, exhaustion and general, all-around misery.
Even Wardaddy — who we come to learn has external scars as horrific as those he carries on the inside — feels the strain; he’s not above committing what any court in the civilized world would label a slam-dunk war crime.
Into this surreal landscape comes Pvt. Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman), a baby-faced clerk-typist drafted eight weeks earlier and assigned by the Army, in its infinite wisdom, to serve as Fury’s assistant driver. His first question to his new compatriots: “Which way’s the front?”
As Norman learns such valuable lessons as sticking with short bursts when firing the tank’s forward machine gun (“That way you harvest more meat per bullet”), the film unfolds in a handful of large-scale set pieces. These include a tense open-field battle that has Fury and three other Shermans going up against a single behemoth Panzer (roughly an even fight), and some brutal close combat in the cramped, twisting streets of a small village.
But just as momentum is developing, Ayer slams to a halt in that village for an extended scene in which Wardaddy and Norman find two German women hiding in an apartment, the older Irma (Anamaria Marinca) and her young teenage cousin, Emma (Alicia von Rittberg).
Mind games ensue that are interesting but feel out of place in a scene that goes on too long and slows the pace to a crawl on its way to a fatalistic, and fairly predictable, resolution.
The big finale, which launches the Fury crew on what looks to be a certain suicide mission, will pin you back in your seat.
But the entire scene rests precariously on a highly questionable decision by Wardaddy that essentially shreds the halo of small-unit leadership that Ayer has spent the entire film building up around the character.
And the scene’s denouement, involving Norman’s ultimate fate, is preposterous in a film that’s supposedly all about realism.
No quibbles with the performances; they’re all top-shelf. Pitt commands the screen as strongly as he’s ever done, Lerman aces the clueless neophyte vibe, and all the supporting players fill their niches well. Even the usually annoying LaBeouf restrains himself for a change. And there’s no denying Ayer’s craftsmanship with the production values.
Still, there are some big holes here, and we may someday look back on this relentlessly grim, savagely violent yet curiously shallow offering as the point at which the World War II genre officially ran out of gas.
Longtime fans of that venerable genre no doubt will feel obligated to catch “Fury.” But don’t be completely shocked if you leave the theater and find yourself wondering why.
Rated R for scenes of strong war violence, grisly images, and nonstop bad language.
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