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A brutal glimpse into war with new movie, ‘Fury’

Robert Shaffer
Connector Contributor

As I watched “Fury” in the theater, it did not take me long to realize something: I was watching a WWII movie made for the year 2014. There are no flag-waving, patriotic, idealistic scenes in “Fury” and there are no assurances that there are brighter days to come. The American soldiers are not wholesome, morally-pure bearers of freedom.

Instead, we get five American soldiers who are products of the effects of war. They are as rude and crude as they are tough and united; they make morally-ambiguous, even morally-repugnant, decisions in order to survive for just one more day. The movie is not only better because of this: it is unforgettable.

Written and directed by David Ayer, “Fury” follows five Americans who crew their Sherman tank, named Fury, through Germany in April 1945. Anyone who knows a little WWII history knows that Germany in the spring of 1945 was a harsh place. The Germans were fighting with everything they had in order to stave off the Allies final push into Berlin; the toll this took on the Allies was devastating.

Capturing this toll necessitated a strong cast of actors, and that is something that “Fury” clearly had. Brad Pitt plays Don “Wardaddy” Collier, the tank’s disciplined commander, Shia LaBeouf plays Boyd “Bible” Swan, the tank’s religious main gunner and Jon Bernthal (Shane of “The Walking Dead”) plays Grady “Coon-Ass” Travis, the tank’s shell loader and mechanic. The crew is rounded out by Michael Peña who plays Trini “Gordo” Garcia, the driver, and Logan Lerman who plays Norman Ellison, the naive typist who is thrown into combat as the tank’s assistant driver.

The first time we see the unit (before Lerman’s Norman is introduced), the men are sitting in Fury, trying to repair the tank in order to get back to base. The men are the only surviving tank in their battalion and are stuck in a smoke-filled battlefield; the unit’s former assistant driver lays dead in his seat, and the men bicker about what needs to be done. “Gordo” is chastised for being Mexican and for speaking Spanish. “Coon-Ass” is called stupid. Offensive remarks are made by all, but nothing ever feels contrived. The dialogue is believable and allows viewers to see the fear the crew members are attempting to hide.

A large portion of “Fury” takes place inside the actual tank. Inside Fury, camera angles consist of tight close-ups that drive home how confined of a space the men were fighting in. These close-ups are tight enough that we rarely ever see more than one crew member at a time. The technique of stringing shots like these together helps to show how integral each man’s defined role was for the crew’s survival.

Battle scenes are equally as engaging. Instead of the bombastic, sweeping battle scenes that seem so common in war movies, battles in “Fury” are shot in a fairly conservative way. For the most part, angles stay behind or next to the tank, giving viewers the perspective that crewmembers and combatants would have had; the camera switches from the interior of the tank to the exterior of the battleground.

This perspective is furthered by the radio chatter that accompanies battles: orders, observations and the screams of dying men are all heard. This sense of realism was so strong that, at times, “Fury” felt closer to documentary footage than a Hollywood-produced film.

“Fury” doesn’t escape all war movie clichés. Lerman’s character Norman, who can’t kill in the beginning of the movie, becomes a fierce machine gunner by the end of the movie, receiving the nickname “Machine” in the process. And, while the movie’s score is rousing and emotional, at times it made the film feel overdone. A marching, chanting battalion of Nazi SS soldiers is already a frightening sight to behold, it doesn’t need a thunderous soundtrack to underscore it. A lack of a score—and just the use of silence—would have been preferable.

A strongpoint of the film is its ability to depict the gruesome, but poignant, facts of war. At one point, Pitt’s “Wardaddy” confronts Lerman’s Norman about the bleakness of war. “Ideals are peaceful, history is violent,” he says.

“Wardaddy” also tells Norman that just as the Germans are there to kill them, they are there to kill the Germans. At the same time, Pitt has a few scenes where, in solitude, he struggles with the orders he has to give and even appears beaten down because of them. “Fury” is a movie where no glorification of war exists. War is shown as an unforgiving means to an end; men justify killing each other because they know that if they do not kill the other side, in turn, the other side will kill them.

It is refreshing that a WWII film does not idealize American military power or actions. The lack of idealization and glorification makes “Fury” feel real and honest. To a modern public that is confused about t­­­­he state of world affairs, honesty in the display­­­­­ of war and its brutality is a profoundly powerful thing to experience, and it is something that “Fury” excels at doing.

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