David Ayer’s Fury, set in April 1945 and following the battle hardened crew of a Sherman tank as the Allies make their final push to defeat the Nazis, owes a very obvious debt to Fuller. Like Fuller’s The Big Red One (1980), it is an epic with a warped and delirious feel.
Just as Fuller once did, Ayer tries throughout to combine a grunt eye view of combat with poetic symbolism. Right at the outset, a German officer on a white horse is seen riding through a corpse strewn battlefield. It’s a scene of utter devastation, dark and muddy, against which the horse looks like something from a fairy tale. We all know that the eerie quiet is just a prelude to an act of extreme violence.
Brad Pitt’s character, the tank commander Sgt. Don “Wardaddy” Collier, is the type of gnarled veteran you could imagine Lee Marvin or Robert Ryan playing in a previous generation. Pitt’s face is well nigh permanently caked in dirt. He still gets to show off his torso at one stage but although he may still have the body of a male model, Collier also reveals the scars of battle.
Pitt’s performance is intriguing because, at least initially, he is prepared to be so unsympathetic.
