Fury (2014 Film) - Fury Film
Fury is a 2014 American war film written and directed by David Ayer. The film stars Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Michael Peña, Jon Bernthal and Jason Isaacs. The film portrays US tank crews in Nazi Germany during the final days of World War II. Ayer was influenced by the service of veterans in his family and by reading books, such as Belton Y. Cooper's Death Traps, about American armored units in World War II and the high casualty rates suffered by tank crews in Europe. Ayer aimed for a greater degree of realism in the film than in other World War II dramas.
Rehearsal began in early September 2013 in Hertfordshire, England followed by principal photography on September 30, 2013, in Oxfordshire. Filming continued for a month and a half at different locations, which included the city of Oxford, and concluded on November 13. Fury was released on October 17, 2014. The film received positive reviews from critics and proved to be successful at the box office.
Plot
The film follows Don "Wardaddy" Collier (Brad Pitt), a battle-hardened U.S. Army staff sergeant in the 2nd Armored Division, commanding an M4A3E8 Sherman "Easy Eight" tank named Fury and its five-man all-veteran crew: gunner Boyd "Bible" Swan (Shia LaBeouf); loader Grady "Coon-Ass" Travis (Jon Bernthal); and driver Trini "Gordo" Garcia (Michael Peña) as the Allies make their final push into Nazi Germany towards the end of the war. When the tank's original assistant-driver/bow-gunner, "Red", is killed in action, Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman), a fresh recruit who has only been in the army for eight weeks and trained as a clerk typist, is assigned as a reluctant replacement. Seeing that Norman is clearly inexperienced, the crew of "Fury" do not like him much at first.
Fury is assigned to a new tank platoon with Wardaddy serving as Platoon Sergeant. The other tanks in this platoon are named "Murder, Inc", "Lucy Sue", and "Old Phyllis". They re-enter combat, where Norman's inexperience becomes dangerous when he fails to shoot several Hitler Youth, who ambush the platoon leader's tank with a Panzerfaust. After the ambush, with Wardaddy in command, the platoon links up with a unit from the 41st Armored Infantry Regiment. The platoon is sent to rescue soldiers pinned down in a field nearby. With infantry in support, the tanks engage in a battle with a German anti-tank gun battery. During the fighting, Norman hesitates under fire again. Angered at his incompetence, Wardaddy orders Norman to execute a captive German, who was found wearing a U.S. Army overcoat. When Norman refuses, Wardaddy puts him in a chokehold and forces him to hold his revolver and pull the trigger, killing the German prisoner. The crew seems to warm up to Norman following the inc ident and assures him that Wardaddy is looking out for Norman's best interests.
They soon mount up and continue the attack into a neighboring town. On the road into the town, the platoon passes several children and civilians that had been hanged by the SS for refusing to fight, which proves to be an additional sobering experience for Norman. Wardaddy then leads the tanks to capture the town, where Norman, having seen the German brutality first-hand, kills several German soldiers after they had been hit with white phosphorus.
With the town secure, the crew and their infantry support take time to relax and explore the village. While searching an apartment, Wardaddy and Norman encounter a German woman, Irma, and her younger cousin, Emma. The pair seem to bond with the women over breakfast, particularly Norman (who ends up having sex with Emma), before the rest of the Fury crew barges in and begins harassing the women. The men leave, just minutes before a German artillery bombardment strikes the town. Before pulling out, Norman finds Emma dead in the rubble, further embittering him.
After leaving the town, the infantry commander orders his tank platoon to hold a vital section of crossroads to guard the Allies' vulnerable rear lines. They head toward their objective, only to be ambushed by a German Tiger I tank, which knocks out Murder Inc. Wardaddy leads the remaining three Shermans in a counter-attack. The Tiger destroys Old Phyllis and Lucy Sue, leaving Fury as the sole survivor. By maneuvering to the rear of the Tiger, Fury is able to fire into the weaker rear armor and destroy the German tank. As the Tiger crew attempts to bail out of their burning tank, Wardaddy dispatches them with his STG-44 assault rifle as Norman furiously kills the German tank commander using Fury's 30-caliber bow machine gun. After the encounter, the Fury crew learns that their tank's radio is damaged and that they are now isolated and must continue their mission alone.
Just as Fury reaches the crossroads, the tank is immobilized by an anti-tank mine which breaks one of its tracks. While Gordo and Bible attempt repairs, Wardaddy orders Norman and Coon-Ass to check for any surviving German soldiers in the nearby farmhouse. It turns out to be a deserted aid station with everyone in it being dead. It is here that Coon-Ass takes a moment to apologize to Norman for everything that he and the crew has put the latter through as he thinks that Norman is a good man while the rest of them aren't, for which Norman willingly forgives him. Wardaddy then tells Norman to scout the nearby hill, giving him some rations while the crew tries to repair the broken track. Norman spots a battalion of roughly three hundred Waffen-SS panzergrenadiers heading to their direction and swiftly runs back to report this to Wardaddy and the crew. The crew initially decides to abandon the crossroads on foot, however, Wardaddy refuses to leave, saying that Fury is his home. He tel ls the crew that they may leave if they want to. Norman then declares his intention to stay with Wardaddy, followed by Gordo, Bible and finally Coon-Ass.
The crew disguise Fury to make it appear to be abandoned, burning and disabled. They then wait for the impending arrival of the German forces, during which they share a fresh bottle of whiskey; the crew dub Norman "Machine" and formally accept him into the Fury crew.
The SS battalion arrives and inspect the seemingly disabled Fury. When they get close enough, the crew springs their trap and assails the Germans with all available weapons. Despite inflicting massive casualties on the Germans, one-by-one, the members of Fury are killed with Wardaddy mortally wounded by sniper fire. As Germans infiltrate the tank, Wardaddy directs Norman to a hatch at the bottom of the tank; Norman escapes through the hatch as the Germans drop grenades into the body of Fury, killing Wardaddy. Norman is then spotted hiding under the tank by a young SS soldier who, after some hesitation, decides to simply leave him instead of reporting him as the remnants of the German battalion, now much thinner in number, press on toward their destination.
Norman awakens early the next morning and re-enters the tank, finding the deceased members of Fury inside. He then covers Wardaddy's body with his own jacket, and upon hearing noise outside, arms himself with the fallen Wardaddy's revolver. The hatch is then opened by a US Infantryman who helps Norman out and evacuates him via an ambulance. The film ends with an overhead shot showing the crossroads and the carnage surrounding Fury.
Cast
Production
Casting
Prior to filming, Ayer required the actors to undergo a four-month preparation process. This included a week-long boot camp run by Navy SEALs. Pitt stated, "It was set up to break us down, to keep us cold, to keep us exhausted, to make us miserable, to keep us wet, make us eat cold food. And if our stuff wasn't together we had to pay for it with physical forfeits. We're up at five in the morning, we're doing night watches on the hour."
Ayer also pushed the cast to physically spar each other, leading to many black eyes and bloody noses. They insulted each other with personal attacks as well. On top of that, the actors were forced to live in the tank together for an extended period of time where they ate, slept, and defecated.
In regard to his choices, Ayer defended himself, saying, "I am ruthless as a director. I will do whatever I think is necessary to get what I want.â€
Filming
The film's crews were rehearsing the film scenes in Hertfordshire, England, in September 2013. The crew were also sighted filming in various locations in the North West of England. Brad Pitt was spotted in preparations for Fury driving a tank on September 3 in the English countryside. Principal photography began on September 30, 2013, in the Oxfordshire countryside. Pinewood Studios sent warning letters to the villagers of Shirburn, Pyrton and Watlington that there would be sounds of gunfire and explosions during the filming of Fury.
On October 15, 2013, a stuntman was accidentally stabbed in the shoulder by a bayonet while rehearsing at the set in Pyrton. He was taken to John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford by an air ambulance. Police confirmed that they were treating it as an accident. In November 2013, the film caused controversy by shooting a scene on Remembrance Day in which extras wore Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS uniforms. Ayer apologized for the incident, and Sony also made an apology. Filming was wrapped-up on November 15, 2013 in Oxfordshire.
Music
On November 19, 2013, composer Steven Price signed on to score the film. Varèse Sarabande released the original soundtrack album for the film on October 14, 2014.
Portrayal of history
Fury is a fictional film about a tank crew during the final days of the war in Europe. Ayer was influenced by the service of veterans in his family and by reading books such as Belton Y. Cooper's Death Traps about American armored warfare in World War II. Ayer went to considerable lengths to seek authentic uniforms and weapons appropriate to the period of the final months of the war in Europe. The film was shot in England in large part due to the availability of working World War II-era tanks. The film featured a Tiger 131, the last surviving operational Tiger I. The tank belongs to The Tank Museum at Bovington, England. It is the first time since the 1950 film They Were Not Divided that a real Tiger tank, not a prop version, has been used on a film set. Tiger 131 is a very early model Tiger I tank; externally it has some significant differences from later Tiger I models, most noticeably the outermost row of road wheels (of the trio per axle, u sed in the Schachtellaufwerk overlapping and interleaved arrangement characteristic of the Tiger I) which are also rimmed in rubber, as well as the dustbin shaped cupola. In the last weeks of the war a number of these early model Tigers were used in last ditch defense efforts; one of Germany's last Tigers to be lost at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin was of a similar vintage.
Ten working M4 Sherman tanks were used. The Sherman tank Fury was played by an M4A2 Sherman tank named RON/HARRY (T224875), also lent by The Tank Museum. Ayer's attention to detail also extended to the maps used in the film. A 1943 wartime map of Hannover, Germany held in McMaster University’s Lloyd Reeds Map Collection was used to demonstrate the types of resources relied on by Allied forces.
While the plot of the film is fictional, the depiction of the tank Fury and its commander Wardaddy parallels the experience of several real Allied tankers, such as the American tank commander Staff Sergeant Lafayette G. "War Daddy" Pool who landed just after D-Day and destroyed 258 enemy vehicles before his tank was knocked out in Germany in late 1944, and the small number of Sherman tanks to survive from the landing at D-Day to the end of the war, such as Bomb, a Sherman tank that landed at D-Day and survived into the bitter fighting in Germany at the war's end, the only Canadian Sherman tank to survive the fighting from D-Day to VE Day. The plot also has some similarities to the battle of Crailsheim, fought in Germany in 1945. The last stand of the crew of the disabled Fury appears to be based on an anecdote from Death Traps, where a lone tanker was "in his tank on a road junction" when a "German infantry unit approached, apparently not spotting the t ank in the darkness." This unnamed tanker is described to have ricocheted shells into the enemy forces, fired all of his machine gun ammunition and thrown grenades to kill German soldiers climbing onto the tank. Cooper concluded: "When our infantry arrived the next day, they found the brave young tanker still alive in his tank. The entire surrounding area was littered with German dead and wounded." The battle bears some resemblance to that of Medal of Honor recipient Audie Murphy aboard a burning M10 tank destroyer outside Holtzwihr in Alsace-Lorraine on January 26, 1945. The fighting in the film also bears similarity to the 1943 film Sahara starring Humphrey Bogart in which the crew of an M3 Lee named "Lulu Belle" and a contingent of stranded British soldiers, defend a remote well in Libya against a larger German force of the Afrika Korps, to the demise of most of the Allies.
Release
Sony Pictures had previously set November 14, 2014 as the American release date for Fury. On August 12, 2014, the date was moved up to October 17. The film was released in the United Kingdom on October 22, 2014.
Fury had its world premiere at Newseum in Washington, D.C. on October 15, 2014, followed by a wide release across 3,173 theaters in North America on October 17.
Home media
The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc in the United States on January 27, 2015.
Partnership with World of Tanks
As part of the UK DVD release, the game also hid 300,000 codes inside copies of the film, which gave in-game rewards and bonuses.
Internet leak
The film was leaked onto peer-to-peer file sharing websites as part of the Sony Pictures Entertainment hack by the hacker group "Guardians of Peace" on November 27, 2014. Along with it came four unreleased Sony Pictures films (Annie, Mr. Turner, Still Alice, and To Write Love on Her Arms). Within three days of the initial leak, Fury had been downloaded an estimated 1.2 million times.
Reception
Box office
Fury was a box office success. The film grossed $85.8 million in North America and $126 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $211.8 million, against a budget of $68 million.
- North America
Fury was released on October 17, 2014, in North America across 3,173 theaters. It earned $1.2 million from Thursday late night showings from 2,489 theaters. On its opening day, the film grossed $8.8 million. The film topped the box office on its opening weekend earning $23,500,000 at an average of $7,406 per theater. The film's opening weekend gross is David Ayer's biggest hit of his (now five-film) directorial career, surpassing the $13.1 million debut of End of Watch and his third-biggest opening as a writer behind The Fast and the Furious ($40 million) and S.W.A.T. ($37 million). In its second weekend the film earned $13 million (-45%).
- Other territories
Fury was released a week following its North American debut and earned $11.2 million from 1,975 screens in 15 markets. The film went number one in Australia ($2.2 million) and number five in France ($2.1 million). In UK, the film topped the box office in its opening weekend with £2.69 million ($4.2 million) knocking off Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles which earned £1.92 million ($3.1 million) from the top spot. In its second weekend the film added $14.6 million in 44 markets, bringing the overseas cumulative audience [cume] to $37.8 million. It went number one in Finland ($410,000) and in Ukraine ($160,000).
Critical response
Fury received positive reviews from critics, who praised the portrayal of war, as well as Ayer's direction, Price's score and the work of its main cast members; with the performances of Brad Pitt, Logan Lerman, and Shia LaBeouf singled out for praise. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a "Certified Fresh" rating of 77% based on 228 reviews, with an average rating of 6.9/10. The site's consensus reads, "Overall, Fury is a well-acted, suitably raw depiction of the horrors of war that offers visceral battle scenes but doesn't quite live up to its larger ambitions." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 64 out of 100, based on 47 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
The Boston Globe's Ty Burr gave 2.5 out of 4 stars and talked about Pitt's character Sergeant Don "Wardaddy" Collier, commenting on Wardaddy's portrayal as "the battle-scarred leader of a tank crew pushing through Germany toward Berlin, Brad Pitt creates a warrior who is terse, sometimes noble, more often brutal." Another critic, Burr, explained that Ayer portrayed in the character of Wardaddy "a figure both monstrous and upstanding. In one scene, he shoots a captured enemy officer in the back. A few scenes later, he's protecting two German women from being assaulted by his own men." Burr further stated that, "Fury gives us terrible glimpses: tank treads rolling over a body pancaked into the mud, an elderly woman cutting meat off a dead horse, a woman in a wedding dress among a crowd of refugees. Fury wants to lead us to a fresh consideration of 'the good war' while simultaneously celebrating the old bromides and clichés. No wonder it shoots itse lf in the tank."
Newsday's Rafer Guzman admired director Ayer, who "does a good job of putting us inside the tank Fury"; with "all the extra blood and brutality, this is still a macho and romanticized war movie", and he singled out Pitt, who he said "serves honorably in the John Wayne role". Deadline Hollywood's Pete Hammond praised Lerman's performance saying, "It is a great performance, very Oscar-worthy in part of Logan Lerman. Those scenes between Brad Pitt and Logan Lerman trying to teach him the trips of war and how to man up is remarkable."
Film critic Christopher Orr of The Atlantic magazine said that the film "is too technically refined to be a truly bad movie, but too narratively and thematically stunted to be a good one. In a sense, it succeeds too well in conjuring its own subject matter: heavy, mechanical, claustrophobic, and unrelenting." The Philadelphia Inquirer's Steven Rea gave the film 3 out of 4 stars and praised, "Fury presents an unrelentingly violent, visceral depiction of war, which is perhaps as it should be. Bayonets in the eye, bullets in the back, limbs blown apart, corpses of humans and horses splayed across muddy, incinerated terrain. Ayer brought a similar you-are-there intensity to his 2012 cops-on-patrol drama, End of Watch (also with Peña)." But on the opposite side of Rea's admiration, he thinks, "It wouldn't be right to call Fury entertaining, and in its narrow focus (as narrow as the view from the tank's periscope), the film doesn't offer a broader tak e on the horrors of war - other than to put those horrors right in front of us, in plain view." Chris Vognar wrote the review for The Dallas Morning News giving the film "B+" grade, in which he writes about "War" which he thinks is, "hell," and also "relentless, unsparing, unsentimental and violent to the mind, body and soul. Fury conveys these truths with brute force and lean, precise drama." Kenneth Turan for the Los Angeles Times praised the film highly, writing: "Best job I ever had" sentence "is one of the catchphrases the men in this killing machine use with each other, and the ghastly thing is they half believe it's true."
Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter simply said, "Fury is a good, solid World War II movie, nothing more and nothing less. Rugged, macho, violent and with a story sufficiently unusual to grab and hold interest, it's a modern version of the sort of movie Hollywood turned out practically every week back in the 1940s and 1950s." Peter Debruge wrote for the magazine Variety in which he praised Pitt, "Brad Pitt plays a watered-down version of his 'Inglourious Basterds' character in this disappointingly bland look at a World War II tank crew." The Wrap's James Rocchi gave 4 out 5 ratings and expressed a warm approval of the film which is "unflinching, unsentimental and never unconsidered, "Fury's rumbling, metal-clad exterior has real humanity, fragile and frightened, captured and caged deep within it." Randy Myers of the San Jose Mercury News rated the film 3 out of 4 and talked about LaBeouf "who's most impressive , inhabiting the soul of a scripture-quoting soldier who seeks guidance from the Word in hopes of remaining on a moral path. While much has been made about the reportedly extreme lengths he took to prep for the role, the fact remains it is one of his best performances." Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle gave a 4 out of 4 rating and wrote completely in the favor of the film: "A great movie lets you know you're in safe hands from the beginning." James Berardinelli also gave the film a positive review saying: "This is a memorable motion picture, accurately depicting the horrors of war without reveling in the depravity of man (like Platoon). Equally, it shows instances of humanity without resorting to the rah-rah, sanitized perspective that infiltrated many war films of the 1950s and 1960s. It's as good a World War II film as I've seen in recent years, and contains perhaps the most draining battlefield sequences since Saving Private Ryan.
The New York Times' critic A. O. Scott well praised the film and Pitt's character, "Within this gore-spattered, superficially nihilistic carapace is an old-fashioned platoon picture, a sensitive and superbly acted tale of male bonding under duress." Rex Reed of The New York Observer said, "The actors are all good, Mr. Pitt moves even closer to iconic stardom, and young Mr. Lerman steals the picture as the camera lens through whose eyes and veins we share every dehumanizing experience. Purists may squabble, but if you're a history buff or a pushover for the sight of a man engulfed in flames who shoots himself through the head before he burns to death, you'll go away from Fury sated." The Arizona Republic's critic Bill Goodykoontz said, "In terms of story, structure and look (with the exception of the gore), this movie could have been made at any time in the past 70 years." To Goodykoontz review, Claudia Puig of USA Today gave the repl y, "Given how many World War II films have emerged in the last 70 years, it requires a thoroughly fresh angle to make one seem distinctive." Puig also said, "Flesh-and-blood soldiers play second fiddle to the authentic-looking artillery in Fury, rendering the film tough and harrowing, but less emotionally compelling than it could have been." The A.V. Club's Ignatiy Vishnevetsky gave the film a "C+" grade and said, "It's all very Peckinpah-or at least it could be, if Ayer had any sense of poetry." The Chicago Tribune's Michael Phillips wrote a negative review, saying "At its weakest, Fury contributes a frustrating percentage of tin to go with the iron and steel."
The Miami Herald's Rene Rodriguez gave the film 2 out of 4 stars said, "War is hell. That's entertainment, folks." Amy Nicholson of LA Weekly said, "This is an ugly part of an ugly war, and Ayer wallows in it. Instead of flags and patriotism, Fury is about filth: the basins of blood, the smears on the soldiers' exhausted faces, the bodies pushed around by bulldozers, a decomposing corpse that's melted into the mud." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave 3 out of 4 stars and said, "Written and directed with exacting skill and aching heart by David Ayer, Fury captures the buried feelings of men in combat with piercing immediacy." The New York Post's Kyle Smith said that he "couldn't help suspecting that there's a pornographic leer to it all, a savage glee." Tom Long wrote for The Detroit News and gave the film negative reviews, "Fury is a brutal film that too easily celebrates rage and bloodshed to no clear end beyon d ugly spectacle." The Globe and Mail wrote: "Fury...is a war movie with balls of steel and marbles for brains." Chris Klimek of NPR praised the film and actors, "Fury is a big step up in sophistication. Where it elevates itself from being merely a believably grimy, well-acted war drama is in its long and surprising middle act." New York magazine's David Edelstein admired the film in his own words, "Though much of Fury crumbles in the mind, the power of its best moments lingers: the writhing of Ellison as he's forced to kill; the frightening vibe of the scene with German women; the meanness on some soldiers' faces and soul-sickness on others'."
Accolades
References
Further reading
- Jacob, Frank (October 24, 2014). "Hollywood's Image of the Second World Warâ€"David Ayer's Fury (2014) and the Depiction of Violence in War". Academia.edu.Â
External links
- Official website
- Fury at the Internet Movie Database
- Fury at Box Office Mojo
- Fury at Rotten Tomatoes
- Fury at Metacritic
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