Fury
My dad chose this movie. Happy Father’s Day.
Directed By: David Ayer
Other Notable Films From Ayer: Training Day (writer), The Fast and the Furious (writer), End of Watch (director)
Starring: Brad Pitt, Michael Peña, Jon Bernthal, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman
Screenplay By: David Ayer
Movie Synopsis: A group of American soldiers in a tank fight their way through Nazi Germany.
Signature Line: “On the way!”
THE INTRODUCTION
An accounting of time, and people, and context
A couple of weeks ago, I decided that I wanted my dad1 to pick what we would cover here at GOOD MOVIE leading into Father’s Day weekend. When I mentioned the idea to him, he immediately rattled off five options: Top Gun (hell yes), Saving Private Ryan (hell yes), Fury (hell yes), My Cousin Vinny (hell yes), and Road House (which he was happy to hear that it was covered last year).
I reminded him that Father’s Day weekend is only one weekend long, not five weekends long, so he needed to pick one single movie. After a small amount of internal deliberation, he settled Fury, a war epic about a group of American soldiers in a tank who fight their way through the deepest, darkest part of Nazi Germany during the final weeks of World War II. What follows below are the questions I asked him after rewatching the movie and writing the essay on it.
Of the five movies you mentioned as possibilities, two of them were World War II epics. What is it about those movies that you find so fascinating?
I guess I like war movies. That’s about it.
What specifically do you like about them?
The action,; imagining what they had to go through. Fury and Saving Private Ryan are my two favorite war movies. But there are a lot. Hamburger Hill, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket. Military movies got really popular right around the time I joined the military. I was watching them while I was in it.
I wanna talk more about that in a second. First, though: How many times have you seen Fury?
Probably 30 times.
Dad, 30?!
Yes.
What is it that you love so much about it?
It’s intense. But you also see the vulnerable side of humanity.
What do you mean by that, “the vulnerable side of humanity”? Because the movie is pretty gruesome.
Well, the Brad Pitt character, he has this attitude to just get through what he’s doing. He just goes. But then you see him after he talks to his men, he walks away and then hides and throws up. He doesn’t show them that side of himself, but we see it. Or when the new kid comes in and he can’t kill anyone. Or even what’s his name, the angry guy—he keeps giving the kid a hard time, but then when they’re alone he tells the kid he thinks he’s a good man. That’s interesting to me.
Do you have a favorite scene?
When they confront the Nazis in the first major fight. They’re in their tanks, and the Nazis are shooting at them. They back up at first, but then they go straight forward at them. That scene, and when they fight the Tiger tank. The big tank. All of the tank fighting stuff is intense.
Those are my two favorite scenes, too, in part because most other war movies emphasize soldiers sneaking around during their missions. Guys are hiding in the bushes or crawling through the jungle or whatever. In Fury, though, every big fight happens in an open field. There’s nowhere to hide. It’s just you versus them, and someone has to die.
There’s no sneaking up on anybody in a tank. You can hear a tank coming from miles away. The way they squeak; the way the tracks squeak. I don’t think they show that in the movie. That’s how it is, though.
You know that from personal experience, right?
Yes.
How old were you when you joined the military?
I was 17.
Jesus. I didn’t even know you could join that early.
You could back then. You just needed a parent signature and you were good to go. I weighed 110 pounds.
Who were you gonna kill at 110 pounds?
Exactly.
Is there anything in Fury that reminds you of your own time in the military?
Yes. I was in a tank battalion. I was a radio computer guy. I drove a 1-1-3 at the rear of the pack.
What’s a 1-1-3?
It’s an armored personnel carrier, the one you see where the guys come piling out of the back of it.
You were in Germany, too, right?
Yes. I was stationed in Germany for almost two years. I wasn’t in a tank battalion there, though. I was in a howitzer battalion. That’s heavy cannon artillery. You’ve probably seen them, too. They point their barrels about 45 degrees in the air and fire at things miles away. But it was peace time, not war time.
Thank God. Did you have a cool nickname like Bible or Machine or whatever?
No.
Did you want one?
No.
I’ll give you one.
No.
My dad is cool. I love him a lot.
THE VIEWING
A timestamped rewatch of Fury
2:58: War movies typically fall into one of four separate categories: There’s the trenchant war movie intended mainly to serve as a referendum on the pliancy of human nature (like, say, Full Metal Jacket). There’s the contemplative war movie intended mainly to serve as a commentary on the military as an institution (like, say, Tigerland). There’s the brutal war movie intended to strip away everything but the barbarity of warfare (like, say, Come and See). And there’s Saving Private Ryan, which somehow manages to be all of those things at once. Fury lands in the barbarity group, which the movie establishes immediately by opening with a scene where a guy tackles a Nazi soldier from his horse and then stabs him multiple times in the face and eyes.
2:59: P.S. This is what it feels like wandering through a T.J. Maxx right before Christmas.
8:19: There are five guys in the crew at the center of Fury. Let’s meet them. There’s…
Boyd “Bible” Swan (played by Shia LaBeouf): His two main jobs in the tank are to (a) aim and fire the missiles; and (b) talk about the righteousness of God every chance he gets (which is how he earned the nickname “Bible”). The first time you watch Fury, Bible is the least interesting of the bunch (on account of how reserved he is). But with every subsequent rewatch, LaBeouf’s performance gets more and more compelling.
Trini “Gordo” Garcia (played by Michael Peña): He’s the driver. And he fucking rules. (I wonder what it is about Peña that makes people wanna put him in charge of driving stuff in movies? He drove a cop car in End of Watch, a getaway van in Ant-Man, a motorcycle in CHiPs, and a fucking a fucking spaceship in The Martian.) (Is that enough examples? That seems like enough examples.)
Grady “Coon-Ass” Travis (played by Jon Bernthal): He’s in charge of loading ammunition into the tank’s various guns. He’s a really interesting character because he presents mainly as an unruly lughead, but, as evidenced here in this moment of nonviolence, really he’s just a broken man trying desperately to hold on to whatever final slivers of goodness he has in him. (More on this later.)
And Don “Wardaddy” Collier (played by Brad Pitt). He’s the leader of the crew. His character here is basically the same as his character from Inglourious Basterds, except but replace the charm and humor with catalyzed trauma and dread. And if you’re sitting there right now thinking to yourself something like, “Wait a second. You said there were five guys in the crew. What gives?” To that, I say, “You’re correct. I did say there are five guys in the crew. And I did only introduce you to four of them. Because they haven’t yet met their final member. But they’re about to. He’s…”
Norman Ellison (played by Logan Lerman): He just got assigned to the crew (he’s replacing someone who was killed in battle). Ellison’s job immediately before this? He was a secretary. And that’s not a joke or me being hyperbolic. He was literally stationed in an office typing up memos and shit. He’s super not pumped about being assigned to a tank crew, which is a feeling the others share when they find that he not only has zero combat experience, but he also has a strong aversion to violence.
16:48: How’s this for a first day of work: Ellison was cleaning out the area inside the tank where he’s gonna be sitting and he found a chunk of the guy’s face who he’s replacing. And, I mean, if I was making a list of ways you could tell that your new job was gonna suck, “finding a chunk of your predecessor’s face” would probably be pretty high up on there.
16:49: P.S. Is it just me, or is it at least a little bit weird that none of the other guys threw this face chunk away? Like, they rode all their way from their last battle to their current safe zone with it just sitting out in the open, and nobody was like, “Eh, let’s just toss this out the hatch”????
22:28: Three things to mention here as the crew sets out on their next mission:
The guys get sent out on a couple different missions on Fury. None of the specific details of those missions are of any real importance to the plot. All you ever need to know is that (a) Wardaddy’s crew is one of the best tank crews in the military; (b) Every place they get sent to is the worst possible place to get sent to; and (c) The guys, who have been fighting together for years, trust each other implicitly and care about each other desperately.
Fury is an enjoyable movie to watch for several reasons, not the least of which is that it looks absolutely beautiful. Everything is sharp and crisp and rich. It just feels expensive and important. I love when a movie looks like that.
“Bible” is a cool combat name. And “Gordo” is a cool combat name. But “Wardaddy” and “Coon-Ass”… I mean… they couldn’t have spent two more minutes workshopping those? I’m not calling either one of those guys either one of those names. For them, I’m using their regular names. It’s “Don” and “Grady” for them.
24:29: It took all of about eight minutes for Ellison’s aversion to violence to lead to several men getting killed. (He saw a Nazi soldier sneaking toward the tank caravan through some trees but didn’t shoot him because he looked young. The Nazi then lit up one of the tanks with an anti-tank missile, killing the men inside.) That’s why Don is currently manhandling him in front of all of the other soldiers.
25:30: P.S. This is what it looks like when Hannah gets mad at me during edits because I keep starting sentences with “And so…”
33:35: Here we fucking go. Our first proper battle. It’s four U.S. Army tanks versus a stronghold of Nazi soldiers armed with various anti-tank weaponry. The ten parts of the fight I love the most:
