Nordling here.
There is a lot of conflict in FURY, and that’s not just in the subject matter. FURY is fighting with the ghosts of a thousand World War II movies. While it never breaks new ground plotwise, director/screenwriter David Ayer would rather you forget all those past films and take FURY on its own terms, which is fair. There isn’t a war film out there that doesn’t walk across well-traveled ground. FURY is full of familiar characters and situations, and it’s to Ayer’s credit, and to the actors, that they commit utterly to the movie they are making, as if this story is fresh and new. But there is no escaping it - we’ve seen FURY done before - sometimes better, sometimes worse.
Take our characters, who drive the tank known as Fury, and who have held out longer than most in the war: the war-weary commander (Brad Pitt), the rookie who has never seen war before (Logan Lerman), the God-fearing holy man who’s also a gunner (Shia LeBoeuf), the dumb-as-a-stump rustic mechanic (Jon Bernthal), and the driver who tries to keep everyone safe (Michael Peña). On paper they’re lifted straight out of a thousand other war films. You can’t ignore the elephant in the room, but, also to be fair, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN was guilty of the same war movie cliches. It’s just that with Steven Spielberg at the helm, we were able to see something we’d never really seen before in a war film. Ayer is not Spielberg, and while there are moments in FURY that are inspired, Ayer simply doesn't have Steven Spielberg's skill set.
Still, FURY is effective, because of the level of commitment from the filmmakers and actors. Pitt turns in a very sensitive performance; at first, his Sergeant Collier is abrupt and rough on Lerman’s Norman Ellison, trying to get him to accept the reality of his situation. It’s not the tank crew’s job to understand the politics of war, or their situation. They are there to kill Nazis. The more Nazis they kill, the closer they are to the war being over, and then the trip home. Collier even tells Ellison that it’s okay to take pleasure in it, especially when it comes to the execution of SS officers, who Collier views as utterly beneath contempt. Collier has kept his unit alive longer than most tank commanders have; Ellison takes over when their second driver is killed in combat, but the war is almost over; it is April 1945, and Germany has been invaded, and the desperation of the Nazis is palpable. All that is left is the final push to Berlin. Ellison is a new variable in an already well-oiled machine, and the crew despises him for it. But while Ellison becomes increasingly jaded and understands his place, Collier begins to question his own zeal and bloodthirsty nature.
FURY does break free of the weight of its film ancestry from time to time, and that is when the film really succeeds. There is an interlude in the middle of the movie, as Collier tries to have a decent, quiet moment amidst all the destruction that is probably the film’s best scene. There is a fragility to all of it, and both Pitt and Lerman hold the scene together like a wounded bird, along with the terrific work of Anamaria Marinca and Alicia von Rittberg as sister refugees that take Collier and Ellison into their home.
That fragility cannot last, of course - this is a war film and quiet moments must be broken. But it is a powerful scene nonetheless. The action is also riveting - Ayer doesn’t direct these moments with shaky camera work, and the sequences are elegant in their execution. There is a tank-to-tank battle that is marvelous in how Ayer lays out the tactics of an inferior force going against a juggernaut German tank, and it is well-paced and exciting. The cinematography of FURY is, much like SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, washed of most of its color, but the camerawork, especially in the action sequences, is well done.
FURY is one of those movies that is full of quality work from all involved, but towards the end has a moment that is so contrived and false that it betrays everything that has come before. The performances are high-quality; not only of Pitt and Lerman but of everyone. Shia LeBoeuf is believable and his portrayal may surprise many. Bernthal and Peña are both very good as well. The movie has a punchy editing style that never lags, and the dialogue is crisp, funny, and full of great banter. But, and without spoiling, there comes a moment towards the end that lacks all believability and logic; simply put, it would never happen, except that the magic of Hollywood insists that it happen.
I would have respected FURY a hell of a lot more had it committed to truth instead of a far more comfortable fiction. The final scenes angered me, and made me feel like my time had been wasted. It’s that bad of a ending. When I review a film like FURY, I have to take in the totality of what I’ve seen, and the quality of the film does outweigh the bad elements. But the scene in question comes very close to ruining it, and for some audiences, it may not matter. But for a film trying to achieve verisimilitude, the moment feels like a lie, especially from someone like Ayer, who with his past work has always seemed like a filmmaker trying to find that elusive truth, no matter how uncomfortable. FURY is a frustrating movie because of this. It is a film at war with itself; there are times when FURY chooses the more interesting route, and gives us moments of beauty and insight. But at other times, FURY refuses to pull the trigger, surrounded by enemies, because the story doesn’t allow it, and it muddles the otherwise strong work by the filmmakers.
Nordling, out.
