This year's BFI London Film Festival is bookended by a pair of World War II movies of vastly contrasting styles. Opener The Imitation Game delved into the complex mind of codebreaker Alan Turing, while the closing night feature is Brad Pitt's Fury, a full-blooded look at the crew of a Sherman tank as they roll through Nazi Germany.
There's nothing particularly deft or subtle about writer/director David Ayer's latest, this is a film that goes for the jugular - literally! The striking opening shot sees a lone German soldier navigate a ravaged battlefield on horseback. Out of nowhere, Pitt's Don 'Wardaddy' Collier leaps from a tank and stabs the enemy soldier to death. It's a moment of savagery from this story's 'hero', and one that typifies the film as a whole. Ayer, a former US Navy sailor, sees war as hell, and in Fury he tracks this physical and spiritual descent through the eyes of Logan Lerman's rookie soldier Norman Ellison.
Norman struggles to adapt to the boisterous nature of his fellow soldiers (among them Shia LaBeouf, Jon Bernthal and Michael Peña), and the shocking violence he witnesses only heightens his despair. Norman's reluctance to take another man's life lies at odds with the tank crew, who collectively describe war as the best job they've ever had.
Pitt settles effortlessly into his role as the group's leader, and his relationship with Norman plays out in a similar way to the Denzel Washington/Ethan Hawke double-act in Training Day. Wardaddy must 'corrupt' his younger charge in order to ensure his survival, and a scene where he forces him to execute a captured German soldier is particularly harrowing.
Ayer keeps the pace quick and battlefield tension high for the bulk of the film, but a mid-point interlude grinds proceedings to a halt as Wardaddy and Norman hole up at the home of two German women. It's a sequence that provides respite from the carnage and further develops Norman, however it sits awkwardly in a film that's all about seat-of-your-pants immersive thrills. Still, it'll give plenty of ammunition to anyone who wants to update their 'Brad Pitt Eats in Movies' YouTube supercuts.
...a tough, testosterone-fuelled throwback to the men-on-a-mission yarns of yesteryear.
The supporting cast all acquit themselves well, with Ayer managing to forge distinct personalities within the confined spaces of the tank. Peña and LaBeouf are particularly impressive, it's only The Walking Dead's Jon Bernthal who gets the short end of the stick. Unfortunately, he's left with a broad strokes character who feels like he's straight out of Ayer's duffer from earlier this year Sabotage.
Fury probably won't go down as a war movie classic, but it's a tough, testosterone-fuelled throwback to the men-on-a-mission yarns of yesteryear.
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