‘Fury’ Foul and Fantastic

If you get through the first three minutes of David Ayer’s ‘Fury,’ you’ll have stomached a taste of what is only going to get more grisly.

Set in the last days of World War II and telling the macho, bloody and arguably true to life tale of a tank crew making its way through Germany in April 1945, ‘Fury’ alights on Captain Brad Pitt’s sergeant Don ‘Wardaddy’ Collier who commands a tank named Fury and its crew.

Somewhat reminiscent of his turn as Lieutenant Aldo Raine in Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Inglourious Basterds’, Pitt, once again, finds himself showing little mercy to Nazis alongside actors Shia LaBoeuf, Logan Lerman, Michael Pena and Jon Bernthal.

With regard to plot, it’s simple enough. Hold a vital crossroads, add an ambush, a capturing of a small German town and a foolhardy last stand and you have the premise through which to explore the horror of war and its dehumanising nature alongside gruesome glimpses of blown off faces, decapitations and dead eyes in bombed rubble.

Though one will certainly look for it, ‘Fury’ offers little sentimentality. Women and children die, likeable characters get blown to bits and the only hope the viewer has is the history we know all which hurtles on towards eternity past Hitler, dead and defeated, and the scores of soldiers, Jews and innocents lost in the most deadly war in recent history.

It’s not a true story but it could be.

Logan Lerman plays a typist sent to replace Fury’s assistant tank driver and is just as pale, prone to puking and praying as one can imagine.

Shia LaBeouf, in the role of his blockbuster plagued career, stars as Boyd ‘Bible’ Swan, a man who has lost his good friend but holds his faith tight, and Michael Pena offers a preface to post-war unravelling as he reminisces and weeps over tea and eggs.

Expertly directed, brilliantly acted, raw and relentless, ‘Fury’ marches on until the end of just about everyone and one’s ability to stomach one more second.

See this film if you don’t mind being left sickened, sapped and a little sad.

‘Fury’ (2014) is now showing at Ster-Kinekor at Maerua Mall.

– @marth__vader on Twitter