Film Review: Brad Pitt takes on Nazis again in war drama Fury

Fury is well acted, has taken the trouble to be minutely authentic and is crisply edited, yet falls short of making a lasting impression

Brad Pitt is here this fall to show us that he’s back in the Nazi killin’ business, and business is still boomin’. Fury, directed by David Ayer, is set inside the titular tank for 24 hours of a single day in April 1945, when the Allies are deep inside Nazi Germany.   

The film follows the crew of Fury — Boyd ‘Bible’ Swan (Shia LeBeouf), Norman ‘Cobb’ Ellison (Logan Lerman), Trini Garcia (Michael Pena) and Grady Travis (Jon Bernthal) led by Sergeant Don ‘Wardaddy’ Collier (Brad Pitt) — who have traversed Africa, France and Belgium and are now advancing through Germany. The film begins with fresh-faced Lerman joining the tank as an assistant driver and finding he can’t come to terms with the horrors of cold-blooded murder that war demands. Much of the film is devoted to the growing bond between Cobb and Wardaddy, who refers to the former clerk-typist as “son” (leaving the theme vulnerable to jokes of yet another adoption by the real-life father of six).  

While Pitt earlier starred in Quentin Tarantino’s rollicking Inglourious Basterds as Lieutenant Aldo Raine, his thirst for Nazi blood in Fury is less for sport and more seeped in ethical conundrums and righteous cruelty. Some not-so-memorable lines include, “We’re not here for right or wrong, we’re here to kill” and “Ideas are peaceful, history is violent”. While the film has etched out the male camaraderie between the crew really well, a staple for any good macho war film, the frightening vibe of the scene with the German women also treads familiar ground.

Ayer, who is best-known for being the writer of the acclaimed crime thriller Training Day, has gone to great lengths to achieve the film’s authentic look. For instance, apart from the original Sherman tanks, the film has featured the Tiger 131, the German “rival tank” that is the last surviving operational Tiger I acquired from a tank museum in England, in a powerful battle scene where it shows its superiority to the American Shermans. However, the last skirmish that sees the crew take on an SS battalion of 300 troops is a tad far-fetched, projected to show Germans as mere cannon-fodder and to rally American pride in their military heroes.

In the tradition of WWII films, Fury offers nothing new in the first half hour, but does begin to pick up slowly. It’s well acted and tightly edited, and will get your heart racing at tense points in the narrative. Wardaddy is terse, noble and brutal in equal measure, Cobb’s internal conflict with his conscience is heart-rending, but his transition to the Nazi-killing machine is unconvincing. The film also scores high on production values — very refined in terms of visuals and style, right from the artillery to the landscape.

This fictional account said to be inspired by veterans in Ayer’s family bats hard for authenticity, yet falls short of making a lasting impact with the impressive legacy of memorable World War II war movies behind it. Keeping quibbles on the politics of representation and the weak thematic tangent aside, Fury is a solid WWII movie. There’s plenty of gore and glory: As the tank ploughs through German-territory, several severed limbs are seen being crushed beneath the sludge, at one point even showing half a face, reminding me of Saving Private Ryan’s talented ‘corpse designer’.  

I don’t have much to fault the film, except that it doesn’t break new ground and could have been made at any time in the past seven decades. If you’re an ardent fan of war cinema and the sight of a man engulfed in flames who shoots himself through the head before he “cooks” to death gives you an adrenalin rush and makes you contemplate about “what man can do to man”, you’ll surely enjoy the film.