Runtime: 2 hours, 14 minutes
Rating: R
Director: David Ayer
Quick Impressions:
Fury is a good, old-fashioned war movie. It’s really not, of course. But it should be. When Fury behaves as if it is a good, old-fashioned war movie, it succeeds brilliantly. The film has one of the most gripping and satisfying third acts I’ve seen in a while.
It benefits from having a pretty novel subject, too, as World War II movies go.
Who knew that in 1945, after the war had ended, some Germans refused to stop fighting, so the U.S. army had to drive around in tanks engaging in pointless skirmishes and forcing every last man, woman, and child with a gun to surrender already?
As I type this out, I think to myself, Surely you must have known that. I guess it’s not that I didn’t know, more that I didn’t care. For me, the actual fighting of World War II was always just sentences on paper. As a kid, I was fascinated by the charismatic leaders—Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt. And I was horrified by the Holocaust. And I was familiar with the consequences of most of the big battles. But I’m not action oriented, so I never really thought about the minutiae of the battlefield itself.
I guess I realized the Germans didn’t just all throw down their guns and reach for their white flags simultaneously. But once Germany lost the war, the remaining efforts of the soldiers at the front were just sentences on paper to me, just an afterthought. I never dramatized any of that in my head.
So Fury got my attention with its premise. Tank movies are certainly not dime a dozen, especially not these days.
It held my attention thanks to its beautiful, haunting score, a superb “supporting” performance from Logan Lerman, and so many gorgeous shots of Brad Pitt striking a tormented pose atop his tank that I started to think the landscape would look naked without Pitt posing in the foreground.
The Good:
Nazis make such reliable villains. As the movie opened, I thought, Wow, what a sad statement about our nation’s sense of self at the moment! To make a war movie where we’re for sure the heroes, we have to go all the way back to World War II. Throughout the film’s early scenes, we get this somewhat pathetic vibe of, Yeah we’re pretty sure that we were the good guys in this one. Take that, Nazis!
No matter how deplorably the American soldiers behave, the Nazis are always right there when you need them, doing something 100 times worse.
In fact, the four letter dismissal of Nazis (well, really, six letters and an apostrophe) that Logan Lerman’s Norman gradually picks up from his colleagues ought to be put on the poster of every American War movie ever made. Really, it’s what we should say now any time a foreign national skeptically questions us about our war mongering ways. The best defense for anything is just to blame the Nazis because (almost magically) it is always their fault.
How we treated the Nazis is like the one bright spot on our otherwise very damning, blotted past. Perhaps we Americans were wrong to kill and oppress and enslave and murder and con and swindle and cheat and belittle and betray and abuse like every other major group we ever encountered in our nation’s history, but doggone it, we were right about those Nazis. That one’s on them. They deserved all the stuff we did to them, and they deserved even more. Nazis totally suck. Everyone agrees (except Nazis).
(I’m being glib, but it’s really very sad that when we want to feel national pride and glory in battle, we seriously have to go back to the 1940s.)
It would be totally possible to appreciate Fury in a completely earnest and uncomplicated way. War is hell, but to win it, you have to man up and kill the Nazis. When you’re a fresh faced boy, there are certain terrible things you don’t understand, but time at the front transforms you into the kind of man the world needs (even if it destroys your innocence). You can watch this movie and get this message from it, and honestly, I think the movie works best when viewed this way.
But of course, this is 2014, and we like all our war movies nice and complicated. Nowadays, we know, there is no right thing, just a lot of wrong choices that always screw somebody over. So you can never possibly “win.” All victories in war are Pyrrhic, not worth the cost of the lives and souls lost. Plus the people we consider “heroes” are villains to somebody else and probably psychologically damaged by what they experience at the front. We also like to savor the idea that we’re very smart now for knowing all this when our unsophisticated grandparents and great grandparents had no idea (unless they happened to read any twentieth century literature, which is overwhelmingly dominated by these themes).
Fury actually gives us the story of a boy becoming a man under the duress of the battlefield more convincingly and intelligibly than just about anything else I’ve encountered. Usually I don’t connect to stuff like this, but this time, I totally got it. The journey of Logan Lerman’s Norman “Machine” Ellison is captivating, satisfying, thoroughly engaging cinema. It resonated with me so much that I felt I’d become a man by the end of the last battle.
The thing is, there’s another movie going on at the same time. Brad Pitt’s Don “Wardaddy” Collier’s story is so much grimmer, more complex, and troubling. Through the character of Wardaddy, Fury raises the question, If war makes a boy into a man, then what does it make a man into? That’s a much more problematic question. We get the sense that for Norman, what happens at the end is like the Alamo. But for Wardaddy, it’s more personal than that. He does want to hold off the S.S., to do his job. But that last stand is something else, too. He knows he can’t win, but can anybody who has seen and done so much evil ever win? Wardaddy is obviously very attached to his Sherman tank, and he’s experiencing the day quite differently than Norman.
The tension between the two characters’ views of the day is what makes the film something more than a simple war movie. Still, I think that in the moments when it seems like a simple war movie, it works best onscreen.
The performances overall are pretty good. Lerman is such a good actor, and this part is perfect for him. If anyone gets an acting nomination for this film, it will definitely be him. (It helps him tremendously that Brad Pitt stars because otherwise we might mistake Lerman for the lead actor. He has one of those “supporting” roles that is larger and more substantial than some leading roles, the kind of role that helps actors win Oscars.)
Brad Pitt is pretty good, too, though he plays the character with such grim stoicism that it’s hard to imagine him getting any Oscar recognition. I’ve seen him give several more captivating performances than this one. He definitely looks good sitting atop his tank, though. They should make a series of tank billboards featuring Brad Pitt gazing wistfully into the distance. I guarantee you they would sell a lot of tanks.
The non-stop off camera shenanigans of Shia LaBeouf make it easy to forget that he’s actually a good actor with a lot of talent. (He and Lindsay Lohan should start a club for legitimately talented child actors whose adult lives went desperately wrong.) LaBeouf is quite good in his role here. He has a wonderful moment in the scene when Norman gets his nickname. LaBeouf has always been good at emoting, and his performance here gets stronger and stronger as the dramatic tension builds.
Michael Peña and Jon Bernthal are good, too. Peña makes a guy with a lot of faults seem incredibly sympathetic, and Bernthal makes a guy with a lot of skills seem incredibly creepy.
Jason Isaacs is in the movie, too! It’s a fairly small part, but I could not recognize him immediately, and it drove me crazy. I remember thinking, It’s harder to place his face because he’s doing an American accent. Then I thought in outrage at myself, If you don’t know who he is, how do you know he’s doing an American accent??????
I should also mention that I absolutely love Steven Price’s score, so ethereal (almost creepy) and eerie and utterly perfect for the film. If Fury actually wins an Academy Award, I’m sure it will be for score because the score is conspicuously good. (At least I think so. I will admit, though, that I know nothing about music.)
Best Scene/Most Oscar Worthy Moment, Brad Pitt:
Pitt won’t be nominated for this film, but the scene with Emma and the eggs is phenomenally intense. The early scenes of the movie passed by without leaving much of an impression for me. But the part with the eggs got my attention.
What I love about this scene is that eventually it brings all principal cast members together (as well as two female co-stars), and every character present is experiencing the moment differently.
What happens here means a lot to Wardaddy and to Norman. It shapes them both, and gives us (the audience) a bit more insight. It also raises uncomfortable questions (for the characters and for us).
The sequence in the house with the eggs is actually so tense and unsettling that it’s unpleasant to watch, yet it’s the most riveting thing that’s happened in the film to this point.
Best Scene/Most Oscar Worthy Moment, Logan Lerman:
The moment in the tank when Norman finally gets his nickname is absolutely phenomenal filmmaking. I loved this scene so much. I cannot heap enough praise on it. So often I’ve read stories about boys becoming men through the camaraderie of battle, but I’ve always come away with the feeling that I’ve missed something, that I really didn’t “get it.” I got this. What a well done moment! It makes the whole movie, actually. Sadly it’s the kind of moment that can only exist under those extreme circumstances. It’s not sustainable. Afterwards, real life intrudes again, with all its problematic complexity.
Best Scene Visually:
I wonder if the working title for this film was Brad Pitt: Tank Model. They could collect various stills of all the times we see Pitt sitting prettily atop his Sherman tank and have plenty of material for a sixteen month wall calendar. He looks great up there, and all the shots are framed beautifully. It’s not just that Pitt is handsome. In this film, in fact, he looks quite weatherworn. But Wardaddy is a part of that Sherman tank, and that tank is a part of him. Rolling around the countryside atop that Sherman tank feels like home to him by now. We definitely get that when we see him up there, posing like a Calvin Klein model, again and again and again.
Best Action Sequence:
The last action sequence is obviously the best. The whole movie builds to that moment. I’m not big on action, and I hope never to be in combat, but even I found the last big shoot out riveting and enjoyable.
The Negatives:
Three huge drawbacks of the movie spring to mind immediately.
I’ll start with the least consequential and most annoying thing. The beginning of the movie drags. Now some might argue, “No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t drag at all. Drag implies that the movie slows down and backs away from development. Actually, this movie builds.”
Okay then, I’ll give you that. It builds—very, very, very slowly. (Imagine listening to the classic rock ballad “I Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore,” on an old record player, and just as REO Speedwagon’s lead singer gets closer than he ever thought he might, someone lifts the needle and starts the first verse over again (maybe a couple of times).
I didn’t dislike the first third of Fury. (Let’s say the part up to the scene with Emma and the eggs.) The cinematography is pleasant, and the score is superb. Easy-on-the-eyes Brad Pitt provides steady, smoldering star power, and the talented Logan Lerman gets ample opportunity to emote.
Still the pace is not exactly jaunty. I kept zoning out, getting off on tangents in my mind—Is it right to say that you’re blessed when good things happen to you? Does that imply that others are cursed? Are you actually blessed or just lucky?—and returning to wonder, When is something going to happen?
Now admittedly, action scenes are not my thing, which is why I kept reminding myself as I watched, Stuff probably is happening. It just doesn’t seem like that to you because you like more dialogue and story building.
The eventual payoff makes up for this slow start, though. The final act has such energy, intensity, and focus that even I will admit that the slow build up is worth it. I also think the feeling of aimlessness or pointlessness of the first portion of the film is generated deliberately to show us the frustration Brad Pitt’s character feels at the war that drags on and on. (I had a very similar reaction to the The Sun Also Rises. The thing is, just because you can tell something is being artfully cultivated doesn’t mean that you enjoy experiencing it.)
My second big complaint about Fury feels petty and misplaced to me, but I can’t get over it, so I’ll go ahead and mention it, I guess. Who is telling this story? Is this based on a true story, and if so, how can we verify what actually happened? Or is Fury a fictional story, and if so, how can we verify what actually happened in the fictional story? What we see feels so pointed and selective that I think the audience deserves to know who is telling us this tale and with what motivation. For a minute there, I got swept away in the intensity of the final act, but then I found myself detaching, unable to shake the gnawing worry, How can I verify this account?
These anxieties about the story’s murky source bleed into a third problem about the film, a huge issue that will probably spoil the movie for some viewers (though it’s perhaps not as obvious as the less significant early pacing problem).
Is this movie celebrating the actions of the crew of the Fury, or is it condemning them? Is this a “soldiers are heroes” movie or a “war is evil” movie? (Of course, those two positions are far from mutually exclusive.) But I honestly think some audiences will watch and think, What a great depiction of the brave heroes who fought for our country in World War II, a simpler time when right was right and wrong was wrong! And then others will watch and think, How debased and corrupting is war! What a toll it takes, needlessly destroying body and soul!
I very much had the feeling that this was a seemingly pro-military movie made by people who actually think war is always evil and soldiers are usually deplorable and disgusting.
The thing is, for a while, Fury has this kind of endearing Red Badge of Couragey quality. You watch and think, Aww, this new recruit is so wet behind the ears. Oh, but being at the front is changing him. He’s becoming more like them. And it sure is a good thing that he’s adapting to be more like the other soldiers at the front because…
And then it hits you, and you’re like, Ohhhhh. This is an anti-war movie. This is a movie that wants the audience to ask, “Is that what it means to be a hero? Is that what heroism looks like?”
The whole movie is slightly frustrating to me because it refuses to play fair and tell us how it feels about war. Must it be so disingenuous at every turn? You know how sometimes a book or movie seems like a familiar friend willing to share secrets with us? Well, this movie seems more like a smug jerk, silently judging us and finding us laughably naïve no matter how we respond to its little tests.
I think Fury would work better if it were less complex ideologically. If it were simply a movie that depicted how war can shape the adolescent human psyche and lead to bonds of brotherhood and make boys men and stuff like that, it might be less smart and honest, sure, but it would be a way more satisfying movie. Honestly Fury only becomes completely engaging (and something special) when Norman realizes he is one of them and faces the last big battle with his brothers in arms. The scene of bonding before battle is hugely captivating filmmaking. But the movie doesn’t let us lose ourselves in that. It insists on pulling us out and forcing us to look at the events with more distanced, clear-headed perspective. That’s morally commendable, I suppose, but the thing is, the movie is better when it lets us lose ourselves in the heat of battle and the camaraderie of the tightly knit group.
Usually, movies are better if they go for greater intellectual complexity, but Fury is that rare case when sticking with illogical emotion is the more cinematically effective option.
Also—this should be obvious given the rating and subject matter, but—don’t take kids! In a very early scene, we see someone encounter half a human face while cleaning up (like just the face, ear to nose). Fury is about war, and it is very gory, in a pragmatic, realistic, no-nonsense way, not an over-the-top, pulpy, silly way. It is not a movie for children.
Overall:
Before watching Fury, I gave little thought to how Germans continued to fight even after losing World War II. That’s such an obvious thing to do. (What conquered people wouldn’t continue to fight once foreign soldiers are on their land?) But honestly, I never thought about all the brave soldiers who gave their lives after the war was already basically won. What a scary and frustrating situation!
So honestly I found the movie eye opening on a very basic level and in many ways an enjoyable watch. Logan Lerman gives a great supporting performance that could get Oscar attention, and Steven Price’s haunting score is absolutely outstanding.
If you like movies about Sherman tanks or Brad Pitt sitting on top of stuff, then you’d better by a ticket for Fury right away while it’s still in theaters.