movies
‘Fury’ unoriginal, unimaginative war movie By Michael Clark Movie Critic
Fury (R) HHHH
FURY (R) Two stars out of four
Prior to “Fury,” David Ayer wrote six police dramas (all of which he directed), the first installment of “The Fast and the Furious” franchise and “U-571,” a World War II thriller set in the close confines of a German submarine. As a screenwriter, Ayer has a keen ear for the rhythm of words and the way they sound, but not so much for flow or naturalness. All top-heavy with aggressive, hard-boiled testosterone, Ayer’s films are intended as unforgiving and realistic but in actuality are rife with faux-macho posturing containing far more bark than bite. Easily Ayer’s most ambitious project to date, “Fury” desperately wants to be epic in scale yet lacks the required grandeur and strives for delivering a new spin on the “war is hell” motif but is little more than a well-intended collection of thread worn snippets of other war films, many that didn’t even take place in the early to mid 1940s. One of the few things Ayer gets right is the semi-original plot. Unlike most other WWII films, “Fury” is set in 1945 when the war was in its final throws with the Allied and Axis camps desperately hurling all they had left at each
other while everyone was exhausted and mentally spent. The combatants were less concerned with missions and directives and more with closure. This is certainly the attitude harbored by tank commander Don “Wardaddy” Collier (Brad Pitt), who would rather die than leave the battlefield with any dangling loose ends. See if this sounds familiar. Collier is from the south, is fond of using a large, non-Army issue knife, sports old, unexplained scars and is laser-focused on killing Nazis. One of few differences between Pitt’s character here and the one he played in “Inglourious Basterds” is that in the latter he commanded a platoon of Jewish soldiers and in the former most the of the actors
playing the soldiers are Jewish. Plopping Collier and his men down into the claustrophobic title character tank (ala “U571”) for the bulk of the film is effective, as it ups the uneasy factor but also hamstrings the visuals. There’s only so many times one can see pale and gaunt soldiers bathed in sweat and photographed so close we can count their nose hairs or be turned off by their dental hygiene. While getting points for visual authenticity of Pitt and the supporting cast, Ayer loses more with his stereotypical “war film” divergent personalities. Shia LeBeouf (trying to recover from many re-
cent career-killing moves) plays Bible, a thumper of the highest order who regularly lectures his brothers in arms on the dangers of sin. On the far end of the other extreme is a guy nicknamed (really) Coon-Ass (Jon Bernthal), an Arkansan who revels in harassing new arrival Norman (Logan Lerman), a greenhorn typist tossed Collier’s way to fill a void left by the early death of another team member. Petrified of battle and/ or bloodshed, Norman is an exact replica of Upham from “Saving Private Ryan” — a man with zero training who is charged with operating a machine gun in the tank who barfs (out of disgust), has sex
(under orders) and eventually becomes a stonecold killer (as a matter of expected forced character arc). The only “normal” guy in the group is Gordo (which translates to “fat” in Spanish), an unfat soldier played by the sturdy and always reliable Michael Peña. After a highly effective opening scene showing Collier surprising a German officer riding a horse, Ayer then goes off on his pilfering rampage. We get a little of “The Dirty Dozen,” some of “Kelly’s Heroes,” an overlong, narratively inert dining scene that more than closely resembles one
Francis Ford Coppola cut from “Apocalypse Now,” lots more of “Saving Private Ryan” and the final half hour that is pretty much a reworking of umpteen versions of “The Alamo.” Arguably there is no event in human history (save for the death of Jesus Christ) that has provided more material for movies than World War II. Even while it was happening, Hollywood was mining it and this is likely to continue ad infinitum — and for good reason. It was the last war America and its allies decidedly won and it is ripe for picking with superlative, unending story lines — fictional or otherwise. The biggest problem with “Fury” is that it is trying to appeal to audiences (mostly men over 50) who have seen these kind of movies before — and know the genre far too well. Recycling ideas, plots and concepts isn’t so bad if you do it in imaginative and gripping manners that don’t come off as so recycled, trudging, improbable, conceptually lazy and unimaginative. (Sony/ Columbia) From left, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Brad Pitt, Michael Pena and Jon Bernthal star in “Fury”. (Special Photo: Columbia Pictures)
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FRIDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2014 • 19