‘Fury’ purports to be one type of movie, does it exceedingly well, and
right at the moment of truth blindsides the audience with an incredulous
conclusion that has no right whatsoever to be in a movie of its type. This
movie is intended to be a serious movie about a very specific place and time,
the invasion of Germany in World War II by Allied tank divisions. War is hell,
the movies shows. Hitler, the ultimate asshole, refuses to give up a lost cause
going so far as to start conscripting German children into the army and hanging
those that refuse to fight. The allied tanks roll past hanging corpses of kids
with placards hung on them that read ‘Coward.’ The other children have guns and
so the Allies have to kill them themselves.
As most war movies feel they sort of must do, we are introduced into one
particular tank division through the eyes of a green youngster by the name of
Norman (Logan Lerman). Get it?
Norman equals Normal Man. This is a cliché but not a particularly bad one.
After all I don’t know anything about tank warfare or warfare in general and
sort of need a character to identify with. The tank division is led by Wardaddy
(Brad Pitt). He has a tight knit group of gritty comrades. Among them are Grady
‘Coon-ass’ Travis (Jon Bernthal), Trini ‘Gordo’ Garcia (Michael Pena), and Boyd
‘Bible’ Swan (a nicely non-annoying Shia Lebouf). You will get to know these
guys as well as you can possibly get to know guys in war in a two hour movie,
that is, pretty well. The movie, which is serious, shows them dirty, drunk,
vile, prone to epithets, and perfectly willing to take advantage of desperate
poverty stricken german women, which very much happened during the war, all
over the place. At one point after Norman conscientiously refuses to shoot dead
bodies on the ground to make sure they are dead, Wardaddy takes him over to a
real life German prisoner of war and orders him to shoot him in the back. ‘I
made a promise to get my men out of the war alive, and you are making it harder
for me to make good on that promise,’ Wardaddy tells him matter of factly
before forcibly putting the gun in Norman’s hands and making him pull the trigger.
A little hardhearted? Well, no, that’s just war.
There are two excellent scenes in this movie. One is a tank battle
between three crappy American tanks (and yes historically speaking they were
crappy) against a superior German panzer. Watching the scene I was struck with
the truth that I had never seen a tank battle in a movie before. At least I had
not seen one with as much suspense and clarity of strategy as the one here.
Apparently the thing about American tanks is that they weren’t built strong enough
to withstand german tank fire. One direct hit and the inside of the tank would
burst into flame burning everyone inside alive instantly. Those things were
literal death traps.
The second excellent scene takes place immediately after the allies take
a town. Wardaddy spies an occupied apartment and takes Norman in to it to
explore it. Inside they find two German women (played by Anamaria Marinca and
Alicia Von Rittberg) who undoubtedly are afraid that they will be raped and/or
killed. Given Writer/Director David Ayer’s treatment of the first half of the
movie, it is quite conceivable something along those lines may happen. It
doesn’t happen and Brad Pitt instead puts the women to work making dinner from
potatoes and eggs he has stashed. (This is a good deal given the fact that the
German women probably haven’t had a decent meal in long time.) However, about
twenty minutes through the scene the other three men show up and they are not
happy that Wardaddy is having this dinner without them, and what about the
women? And here we can notice a real balancing act of fine acting (and good
writing) by Brad Pitt and company. Wardaddy won’t actually order his men to
behave because they have been living through hell for years and will be back
out there doing it again together no matter what happens in that dining room.
His loyalty to his men stops him from putting two anonymous German women over
his crew. But he also does not want a mean scene to occur. So he stops it
essentially by declaring he is going to have a nice meal and won’t allow his
boys to stop it. He provokes good behavior by example and his boys follow him
because of respect not necessarily because it is the right thing to do. This is
a long and complicated dinner table scene (which are not easy to shoot/edit)
and it speaks much about the director’s faith in his audience’s attention span
and emotional intelligence to grasp the meaning of what happens in it.
Of course, the last scene in the movie is like a nice hard slap across
the face reminding the viewer that yes the director and/or producer and/or
studio ultimately thinks you are a mass-market dumbass. The last scene is a
John Wayne avalanche of bullshit. Think of every stupid (i.e. not serious) and
false thing you’ve seen in a war movie. It is inexplicably all contained in
this one final last stand battle where our heroes are prepared to commit heroic
suicide against an entire foot division of S.S. soldiers. Why these particular
guys we just got to know as people who very much want to live would want to
commit heroicide is completely beyond me. Why there is an entire division of
well-uniformed S.S. troops marching around from nowhere to somewhere is also
beyond me. Why would the battle take all day and all night long? Why would the
S.S. waste so many men in dumb charges? Why couldn’t they just bring that
sniper guy up at the beginning before so many of them died? Why would the
German stop shooting so the wounded good guys could say tearful goodbyes to
each other? All of this, what is it doing in a serious movie?
Did David Ayer think that I wouldn’t be satisfied if he didn’t end his
movie with a ‘Wild Bunch’ climax? If he didn’t think so, what was the point of making a serious movie about war at all? Why didn’t he
just make the whole thing bullshit? I don’t get it. I don’t get it at all.
There was so much good stuff here that I can’t even say the ending ruined the
movie for me. It just did not feel like it was part of the same movie at all.
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