Review: "Fury"

One of my favorite things to do as a critic is to point people to great movies they’ve probably never heard of. Case in point: “End of Watch,” which was in and out of theaters so fast in 2012 you probably missed it even if you didn’t blink.

Writer/director David Ayer’s next film, the Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle “Sabotage,” similarly disappeared without a trace. I’m hoping that won’t be the case with his latest, “Fury,” a World War II action/drama starring Brad Pitt that mostly takes place inside a single Sherman tank.

Fair notice: this a grim, dark movie about the dank corners hidden away inside men’s souls. It makes “Saving Private Ryan” seem like a lullaby.

The battle scenes are gruesome, and what happens when the shooting stops is often even more troubling. American soldiers are portrayed not as decent men who sometimes commit evil deeds in the heat of combat, but killing machines who only want to murder the Germans before the krauts murder them.

What a pitiable world Ayers has drawn for us. Unlike most WWII movies that are set when the Nazis still have the upper hand, here it’s April 1945 and the Germans are offering their stiffest resistance before the collapse they know is inevitable.

The soldiers are all scarred, grimy beasts; the German landscape is an open wound, ripped and gasping; the detritus of war lies all around, smoking armored hulks like prehistoric behemoths brought low. It’s not so much that death and carnage are everywhere, but everywhere is death and carnage.

To wit: when the fresh young recruit, Norman (Logan Lerman), is assigned to the crew of the “Fury,” the battered tank that has survived many battles, his first duty is to clean out the bloody mess left by his predecessor. While doing so, he finds part of the man’s face, perfectly intact, staring at him.

So again I say: not for the squeamish, this.

Pitt has a stout, merciless role as Don, aka “Wardaddy,” the sergeant who commands the Fury. His face done up with scars and hair chopped in a deliberately unattractive fop with shaved sides, Don is sure-handed and unrelenting with the enemy, and the same with his crew. He’ll let them bicker and bitch, but when it’s time for them to perform he will brook no hesitation.

When Norman fails to spot and kill a German soldier with an anti-tank gun, and absolutely horrific results ensue, Don makes personally sure that the lad will not flinch next time, using brutal but effective means. He’ll let the Neanderthal gunner, Grady (Jon Bernthal), indulge his base instincts, but only up to a point.

Don takes a softer hand with Bible, a thoughtful young man played thoughtfully by Shia LaBeouf, and Gordo (Michael Peña), the rock-solid tank driver. The sergeant has promised all his men he will keep them alive, but their latest mission will test that pledge.

The Fury is assigned to a platoon of five tanks to guard a crossroads against a force of fresh German troops, who are threatening the advancing division’s supply line. If they fail, the entire Allied advance will ground to a halt and the war could last months longer.

Ayer shows an expert hand for the battle scenes, keeping the focus on the men inside the Fury while giving a pulse-jumping view of the action outside. Tracer bullets and ordnance flash at the screen like lasers, lending the proceedings an eerie stuck-out-of-time feeling. An encounter with a technologically superior Panzer Tiger is especially effective.

The movie works better as a war picture than a character piece. We never quite get all the way inside the heads of the characters, so their peril doesn’t carry as much emotional freight as you’d expect. And a scene inside the apartment of a German woman and her cousin goes in many different directions at once, like a grenade, rather than focused, like a sniper’s bullet.

Still, this is one depiction of war destined to linger in our memory. At times this movie almost seems like a pugnacious middle finger to the classic war epics, in which disparate men come together for a violent but altruistic cause. “Fury” crushes the notion of the nobility of war under its grinding, pitiless treads.

Reeling Backward: "Fury"

"Fury" is one-half of a great movie.

This 1936 film was Spencer Tracy's big break-out role, and also marked the Hollywood debut of the great German director Fritz Lang, who had wisely fled to the States in the wake of Hitler's rising persecution against the Jews. Alas, his American films would never reach the pinnacle of "Metropolis" or "M."

The first, and best, half of "Fury" is an exploration of mob mentality, as innocent everyman is persecuted for a crime he didn't commit. The second half is a revenge story/courtroom drama, as Tracy connives to get his comeuppance against those who did him wrong.

The second half is not bad -- it's just that we've seen it a million times before. The revenge story is a common cinematic theme, in everything from "The Count of Monte Cristo" to "Darkman."

And the fact that Tracy's character, Joe Wilson, does not actually participate in the trial (because everyone thinks him dead) means he's essentially on the sidelines. So most of the attention is focused on his fiance, Katherine Grant, who does the whole damsel-in-emotional-distress thing. Perhaps this is not a coincidence, since Katherine is played by Sylvia Sidney, who was a bigger star than Tracy at the time, and in fact got top billing in the film.

Joe basically just hangs out in a seedy motel, listening to the trial on the radio, and occasionally manipulating events in his favor.

The first half is where Fritz Lang really shines. Joe is on his way to marry Katherine after a long separation, and gets pulled over by some bumpkin deputies. He bears a superficial resemblance to the description of one of a trio of kidnappers, so he gets hauled into jail until the district attorney can figure out whether he's really involved.

But one of the deputies, angry at being teased at the local barbershop about their lack of progress on the kidnapping case, blurts out that they've got a man in custody. A whispering campaign -- perpetrated mostly by women, interestingly -- soon reaches the ears of some rowdies at a local bar, enjoying the suspension of Prohibition. They convince themselves the man must be guilty, and don't want to wait for the law to take its meandering course.

The group keeps saying they just want to talk to Joe Wilson to ascertain the truth for themselves, but it quickly devolves into mob mentality, with a lynching the inevitable outcome. Meanwhile, Joe cowers in his jail cell with his dog, Rainbow, who escaped his own confinement to be with his master.

There's a great scene where the mob is confronting the sheriff, who refuses to give in. Lang sends his camera fleeing over the faces in the crowd, showing how their passion is stirred by the shared sentiment. It's as if the crowd is a dutch oven, melting the diverse ingredients into a single concoction, and heating it to boiling point.

Despite the way it careens into a totally different track halfway through, "Fury" is a worthwhile look at a rising star, and the devolution of the crowd.

3 stars