Fury (2014)
Cast: Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman
Director: David Ayer
Country: UK | China | USA
Genre: Action | Drama | War
Official Site: Here
Editor’s Note: Fury opens in wide release October 17th.
Over the course of the past two decades, writer-director David Ayer (Sabotage, End of Watch, Street Kings, Training Day) has specialized in a particular brand of old-school, throw-back masculinity. In film after film, his male characters operate on the chaotic fringes of society defined by their violent nature and willingness to use violence both as a means and an end. Like the men in Howard Hawk’s films and Sam Peckinpah’s Westerns, they’re also defined by their professionalism, loyalty (to each other above all else), and personal, sometimes idiosyncratic, moral codes. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that Ayer has semi-successfully transferred his masculinity-centered concerns, preoccupations, and obsessions from urban crime-thrillers to period war dramas, specifically Fury, a claustrophobic and provocative men-in-a-tank war film that almost escapes the limitations of genre tropes and clichés.
Fury centers on a veteran tank crew led by Sergeant Don ‘Wardaddy’ Collier (Brad Pitt). Collier has kept his crew alive through fierce fighting in North Africa, D-Day (the invasion of Normandy), and in the last weeks of the war in Germany. Collier’s crew consists of the usual war film characters, the tank’s sensitive, spiritual gunner Boyd ‘Bible’ Swan (Shia LaBeouf), the loader and everyday mechanic Grady ‘Coon-Ass’ Travis (Jon Bernthal), and the tank’s Latino driver Trini ‘Gordo’ Garcia (Michael Peña). Collectively, they’ve seen more – and caused more – carnage than most men. They’re a typically jaded, cynical lot, bickering brothers in arms (in every sense of the phrase). After a recent battle with the Germans, Collier’s crew is down one man, a bow gunner killed in action, his bloody remains still in the tank when they arrive at a makeshift base.
His arc is also Fury’s weakest link, largely due to the unconvincing nature of his transformation; having little to do with Lerman’s performance (he’s more than credible as Norman) and everything to do with an underwritten script.
With World War II a distant memory – if it’s a memory at all – or history fodder taught in high school as yet another example of American exceptionalism (earned, of course), Ayer took the easy narrative way out, elevating Collier’s new gunner, Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman) to an audience surrogate/viewpoint character and primary exposition magnet.. Norman is a raw, green recruit whose skillset extends to typing and filing, not driving a tank or shooting a gun. Collier gives Norman a crash course in surviving the last, so-called “good war”, through violence and brutality that verges on the criminal (as in war crimes). International human rights lawyers, however, never venture onto the battlefield, leaving Collier (and his men) as judge, jury, and executioner, dispensing a form of justice that looks, sounds, and feels more like vengeance than anything else.
As a character, Norman’s arc – from fresh-faced innocent to efficient killer – isn’t just a familiar one; it’s a longstanding genre trope and cliché. His arc is also Fury’s weakest link, largely due to the unconvincing nature of his transformation; having little to do with Lerman’s performance (he’s more than credible as Norman) and everything to do with an underwritten script. This is a script that tries to chart Norman’s arc in the span of two or three days (a weekend basically). Collier’s crew never rises above hastily sketched-in, broad character traits (and that’s when they’re being defined at all). Although, Ayer does give the characters, and by extension the actors playing them, a few moments of respite between the film’s battles to offer hints as to their individual backstories and intense bonding experience as part of Collier’s crew.
As Fury’s central character, Collier monopolizes attention whenever he’s on the screen (sometimes off too). While we never learn what Collier did before the war, we eventually learn that he’s a Texan fluent in German, takes pleasure in speechifying to his men about the nature and costs of war, and hates Nazis, especially the SS, with a fanaticism fueled by a seemingly unquenchable rage. Those hints of Collier’s past would mean little or nothing without a top-level performance to elevate Ayer’s script (which needs elevating on multiple occasions). Brad Pitt gives the kind of effortless performance that made him a movie star two decades ago. Like his character, Pitt’s performance repeatedly hints not just at Collier’s past, but the physical, emotional, and mental toll the war has taken on him.
Ayer’s lack of subtlety serves him well in that regard, but not when his characters are monologuing their way toward a profound or faux-profound point, causing the audience to feel like they’re sitting in a class lecture on the ethics and morality of war.
Fully embracing the horrors of war – or more accurately, their unedited depiction on film – Ayer doesn’t shy away from the realistic, matter-of-fact depiction of violence, even if the theme or subtext crossed over into banality and cliché long, long ago. Heads and limbs graphically separate from bodies, tanks roll over corpses in the muddy, rain-soaked road, men engulfed in flames shoot themselves in the head, while others die so abruptly that a moment’s inattention will result in the audience missing out (if “missing out” is the right phrase to use here). Ayer’s lack of subtlety serves him well in that regard, but not when his characters are monologuing their way toward a profound or faux-profound point, causing the audience to feel like they’re sitting in a class lecture on the ethics and morality of war.
Surprisingly, Ayer’s general weakness as a filmmaker, namely a flat, unengaging visual sensibility, is rarely evident in Fury. Ayer doesn’t only vary his shots, shooting the tank from a variety of angles, but also shows skill in creating above-average visual compositions. More likely than not, Fury’s visuals aren’t the result of Ayer’s newfound sense of style, but the contributions of his End of Watch cinematographer, Roman Vasyanov. Add to that several immersive, creatively choreographed battles, including a rousing tank-on-tank battle past the midway point, and the result, while far from the originality necessary to elevate Fury into a genre-best category, makes for the next best thing: a rousing, thrilling piece of commercial art.
More likely than not, Fury’s visuals aren’t the result of Ayer’s newfound sense of style, but the contributions of his End of Watch cinematographer, Roman Vasyanov. Add to that several immersive, creatively choreographed battles, including a rousing tank-on-tank battle past the midway point, and the result, while far from the originality necessary to elevate Fury into a genre-best category, makes for the next best thing: a rousing, thrilling piece of commercial art.
