Fury opened in 2014, a decade and a half after the late-1990s WWII renaissance of Saving Private Ryan and HBO’s Band of Brothers — which themselves came well after the 1960s heyday of WWII movies. That American movies released in that same time period, like American Sniper (the highest-grossing film of that year), Zero Dark Thirty, and Lone Survivor, were grappling with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, made it feel even more old-fashioned.
But the movie, directed by David Ayer and starring Brad Pitt as a U.S. tank commander fighting in Germany, was a critical and commercial success. This is no doubt because it’s a well-made and a worthy addition to the genre. But its success was perhaps also due to the fact that Ayer had mined new story territory by chronicling the fighting valor of U.S. tank crews, who were vastly under-armored compared to their German counterparts. Ironically, 10 years later, Fury doesn’t feel like it’s aged at all, perhaps because its traditional take on the genre makes it feel timeless.
The brutality of tank warfare
The movie was partially inspired by the book Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II, in which the author argues that Sherman tanks were at a distinct disadvantage compared to those of their superior German foes, and that U.S. tank crews would have suffered far fewer losses had they instead used Pershing tanks.
The argument is controversial, but what’s not in dispute is that the Americans lost a lot of tanks and crews during the invasion of Europe and that the fighting was brutal and dangerous. Ayer stages an open field battle between four Shermans and one massive German Tiger tank that shows just how overwhelmed the U.S. tanks were. Only one of the U.S. tanks survives, and only due to the experience and sheer talent of the American soldiers onboard. But after every encounter, the movie makes it clear how miraculous their continued survival is.
In addition to the realistic depiction of tank combat, Fury captures the day-to-day lives of the crews in vivid detail. The inside of the tanks, where these men essentially live, is filthy, spattered with blood and oil, cramped, hot, and – one would suspect – foul-smelling. Indeed, the crews in Fury look like they haven’t showered in three years, a testament to the verisimilitude that Ayer achieves throughout.
A superior example of its genre
The movie takes a traditional narrative approach. It introduces a squad of seasoned soldiers from diverse backgrounds who have had each other’s backs forever, then adds a newbie, Norman (Logan Lerman), whose lack of combat experience and initial unwillingness to fight threatens to get them all killed.
The crew is led by Sergeant Don “Wardaddy” Collier, played by Pitt as a less sardonic version of his “Nazee” hunter from Quentin Tarantino’s more comedic war movie Inglorious Basterds. The others are played by Michael Peña, Shia LaBeouf, and Jon Bernthal, and Ayer was smart to cast strong, well-known actors to to give depth to the shallow characterizations that are typical of the genre.
Indeed, the performances of the five principle actors are primarily why Fury is as emotionally effective as it is. Collier tells Norman at the outset not to get close to anybody, but, of course, these men become deeply bonded through their shared trauma. The movie convincingly dramatizes the truism that soldiers don’t fight for king, country, or ideas, but for the men beside them.
The horrors of modern war (movies)
In his review of Oliver Stone’s Platoon, Roger Ebert quoted the French New Wave director, François Truffaut, who famously said that it was impossible to make an anti-war movie because war movies always made war seem exciting and fun. Ebert said that Truffaut might have found Platoon — with its graphic combat scenes — to be an exception.
It seems likely. Truffaut, who died in 1984, missed many of the advancements in makeup, prosthetics, pyrotechnics, and CGI that have made modern war movies like Fury so much more realistic and horrifying than the relatively bloodless examples from earlier decades. The end of the production code in 1967, and the subsequent creation of the MPAA ratings system, also ushered in a new era of realistic violence by finally permitting American movies to contain graphic material.
Largely because of this blood-and-guts realism, war in modern movies does not typically look like the fun adventure of so many 1960s WWII flicks like The Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape, The Guns of Navarone, and Von Ryan’s Express. These movies often glossed over the realities of war, emphasizing exciting action scenes and the charisma of legendary icons like Lee Marvin, Steven McQueen, Gregory Peck, and Frank Sinatra.
Fury has its own contemporary icon in Brad Pitt, and he does get a few movie star moments, including a shirtless shot that shows off his famous torso. But his handsome mug is buried behind scar makeup and his character is exceedingly brutal at times, reminding us that he has never been afraid to dirty up his image in movies like Kalifornia and Killing Them Softly.
The value of the realistic war film
If Saving Private Ryan set the standard for the modern depiction of war death, Fury has more than a few moments that match it in terms of utter revulsion. If a filmmaker is determined not to be exploitative, there’s only a few reasons to depict this unflinching reality. One is to show the sheer awful human cost of war. Another is to show the madness of the whole enterprise. A third is to condemn the men in power who hide in bunkers while they order the destruction of civilization.
Fury especially shows the human cost and the madness. There’s a brilliant early moment when Collier, just back from a grueling mission, dips out of sight to process a moment of trauma without his men seeing him lose it, only to realize that German POWs have witnessed his near meltdown. The implication is clear: you can’t escape the war anywhere. Letting your guard down even for a moment makes you frighteningly vulnerable.
To kill or be killed
He never makes that mistake again. As if to double down, he brutalizes Norman until the kid becomes an adequate killer. In one of the movie’s most unsettling scenes, he forces Norman to kill a German prisoner, literally clamping the gun into his hands and making him pull the trigger. Scores of GIs stand by and watch the scene approvingly. They firmly believe that being savage and merciless is the only way to survive.
This attitude is taken to its extreme in an extended sequence in which Collier attempts to act civilized while dining in the occupied home of two terrified German women. When the rest of the crew shows up, they are disgusted at his attempts to prop up some veneer of civilization. They ask him, not unreasonably, how he can play at house after everything they have been forced to see and do. The entire sequence sits on a knife edge of tension, which is released in a moment of horrible irony.
In our current moment, there’s a brutal war ongoing in Eastern Europe (which is also the setting of one of the most harrowing war movies ever made, Elim Klimov’s Come and See), as well as wars in the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere. Madmen and dictators continue to treat soldiers and civilians like human garbage, just as Hitler did.
Because of these realities, we don’t need to wonder why it’s worth watching war films, despite how much they trouble us, as long as they are done respectfully and well. If some people are going to fight and die – often against their will – it is the moral responsibility of the rest of us to understand their experience. Ten years on, Fury continues to viscerally provide that opportunity.
Fury is streaming on Netflix.
