“Ideals
are peaceful. History is violent.”
Writer-director
David Ayer’s war-drama FURY is an on-site experiment on how war inhumanly takes
it all belonging to the human life and still, could make you feel heroic at the
end…with its two major participants of diverse psychological establishments. Fondly
named as Wardaddy in the film, Brad Pitt plays a US Army veteran in World War
II. He’s been somehow busy killing Germans through all of it and the home is
now his armed tank marked as ‘Fury’.
Things get
harder for him when a fresh new recruit joins him with certainly no experience
in the war-field. For Norman, played by Logan Lerman what matters the most is
the sense of being righteous in whatever one does. In his own words, he is a
soldier whose conscience is still intact. ‘FURY’ sees the casualties of war
through the perspectives of both, getting concluded in a much wider panoramic
view of life getting celebrated and survivors/fighters being christened as the ‘Heroes’.
FURY is a
well-directed, authentically executed, visually unsettling, gut-wrenching war
movie that believes not in taking sides but in transporting you to the vicinity
of piled-up dead bodies, smells of air filled with gunpowder and explosives,
taste of blood dripping over the face and everything else a soldier goes
through mentally and physically in any war. Just as we repeatedly see the caterpillar
tracks of the tank crushing mangled bodies and blast-wrecks on its way, film
too crushes a lot in your inner self. Realistically done war action sequences
are the big differentiators here, from the regular ‘highly relied on visual
effects’ movies! You feel the pain and the coarseness of war in a larger and
true essence.
FURY
connects to you also because of its totally consistent and convincing humanly
characters and the performers just getting it right while presenting it on
screen. Shia LaBeouf surprises as an interestingly ‘holier-than-thou’ God-fearing
gunner having Bible in his hands even in the worst state of affairs. Michael
Pena and Jon Bernthal create most of the laughter pieces with their amusing
enactments. Lerman as the newly enlisted fresher thrives in communicating the
dilemma of his inner conscience. In his inhibitions at the first and
transformation later into a more vigorous fighter, he holds your attention with
his balanced act.
Finally,
it is Brad Pitt the film finds a shoulder in to rest on. Watch him forcing
Norman to perform his first kill on the warfront or leading his troop by example
at every single spot. He sure wears the character with definite conviction and distinct
shades in the persona like his own skin. Pitt has played something like this
earlier in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS but this one is more believable & less theatrical.
At the end, FURY celebrates the complexities of war in a very authentic manner
and considering the recent downpour of VFX driven war-films, it is a surprise
you must visit. War hardly does any good, in real. For the film, it does great!
[4/5]
