18. Fury

October 24th in Chicago. Written and directed by the talented David Ayer  the film is set in 1945 where the allies are making their final push into Nazi Germany and it centers on a battle hardened tank crew that has been together since North Africa. Brad Pitt is SSG Don "War Daddy" Collier, the gritty NCO commander of the tank named "Fury." Here's the rest of the crew:

• Shia LaBeouf: Boyd "Bible" Swan, the gunner.
• Michael Pena: Trini "Gordo"Garcia, the driver.
• John Bernthal: Grady "Coon-Ass" Travis, the loader and token redneck. A real unlikeable character.
• Logan Lerman: Norman Ellison, the 30 caliber machine gun operator. The green replacement who is actually a typist.

The film opens as Fury is coming back from a patrol. The 30 cal gunner was killed on the last mission and they need to get their replacement. The replacement turns out to be Norman Ellison, a guy who's been in the Army for 8 weeks and he's been trained as a typist. On their next mission, the lead tank is ambushed because Norman, who has a reluctancy to kill, wouldn't open fire on children of  the Hitlerjugend. Collier chides Norman for the hesitancy and lets him know that this is life or death. Their mission is to relieve US troops that are pinned down and make it to the next town. After relieving the pinned down troops, Collier makes Norman shoot a German prisoner to "harden" him up. He goes so far as to put the gun into Norman's hands and helps him pull the the trigger.

After a brief respite in the occupied town (where there are some very intense scenes), Fury gets its next mission. The tank platoon is to hold a vital crossroad several miles away. En route to the crossroads the platoon comes across a German Tiger I (in reality the German Tiger Tank was the most feared tank the Germans had. It had an 88mm canon, the allied Sherman tank had a 75mm canon, and was heavily armored) that proceeds to knock out the other 3 tanks in the platoon. Fury gets off a few shots but its 75mm shells bounce of the frontal armor of the Tiger. Their only hope is to outmaneuver it to get a shot into the Tiger's rear section.

After narrowly escaping the Tiger ambush, Fury makes it to the crossroads and hits a mine, crippling the tank. Norman, now a hardened Nazi killer, goes out on recon as they are expecting a German counterattack while the rest of the crew try to repair the tank. It doesn't take long for Norman to come back with a report that there is a column of German troops on their way. The fact that the Germans are singing, leads Collier to believe that's the Waffen SS. Collier then makes the decision that he will stand and fight, the rest of the crew can pull back to a safer location. Naturally the crew decides to stick with Collier, he's led them this far. There is wave after wave of German attacks on the tank and the crew slowly gets killed off, leaving Norman as the last remaining crew member. Norman uses the escape hatch and is able to elude capture. As day  breaks, Norman is rescued by an American force, the point being, Fury's heroic last stand was the difference in overcoming the German counterattack. The final overhead shot is of the bodies strewn about Fury, remnants of a bloody pitched battle. The waves of men that were broken on the tank. The horrors of war.

There's a lot to like about this film. With a few exceptions, nothing's clean. The soldiers have been on the line for a long time and it shows. I have no idea what it was like to man a tank in WWII but after seeing this film, I have a pretty good idea. It was miserable and close quartered. Whatever beliefs you have, inside a tank they need to be thrown out because every member of the crew must rely on each other to survive. Pitt is the stereotypical archetype of the tough NCO. He is capable of compassion as well as severe brutality when the need arises. He states that his goal is to get his crew home in one piece (as well as kill Germans). At the end of the day though he is a soldier and soldiers follow orders. He was tasked to hold this crossroad and he will hold it goddammit! With or without a fully functional tank and by himself if need be.

The crew is a mash up of different characters. Each has varying levels of unlikeability. Bible is the uber-religious guy, Coon-ass is the very unlikeable hillbilly straight from the 19th century and Gordo is the hispanic driver who is probably the least unlikeable (Bible is unlikeable strictly because he's played by the very unlikeable LaBeouf). Norman is the fish out of water here, much like Coporal Upham from Saving Private Ryan. Collier kind of takes Norman under his wing (maybe it's his innocence) and shows him the ropes. Collier is very hard on Norman at first but softens in certain times in order to let him know that they're both still human beings. Collier has a sense of responsibility to make sure his crew gets home alive and even though Norman is new, he's part of the crew and the pact holds true. Norman must be trained to survive under hellish circumstances.

Ayer does a sensational job of painting a picture of serving in a WWII tank crew. I don't know what that would be like but that's got to be pretty close. It's hot, dark, cramped and smelly (the BO is probably off the chart and combine that with the exhaust fumes, it can't be that good). This is dangerous work and mistakes mean the difference between life and death. The battle scenes are very reminiscent of Saving Private Ryan in terms of it's realism in portraying how the tank hands out death and what happens when a tank's number is up. It's not pretty.

This is a film worth watching but it is not for the faint of heart. The killing is gruesome and the behavior of the US troops in some spots can be a little unnerving. This is what can happen in a brutal war. As Ayer is a director worth keeping an eye on.