Two stars. Rated R, for profanity and relentless battlefield violence and gore
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.17.14
Classic World War II movies,
absent the cynicism and despair that later infected so many big-screen
depictions of the Vietnam quagmire, laced their stories with honor, chivalry,
moral fortitude and an absolute respect for the chain of command.
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| Frightened and badly out of his depth, Norman (Logan Lerman, left) can't imagine that he'd be of any use to the Sherman tank team led by Wardaddy (Brad Pitt). But this battle-weary sergeant knows how to inspire his men, even a callow newcomer like Norman, and soon the kid is executing Nazi scum with the enthusiasm of a seasoned warrior. |
The Nazi enemy may have behaved
like vicious, amoral swine, but our stalwart boys worked together with courage
and righteousness, guided by the innovative strategies of battlefield stalwarts
whose ingenuity helped trump sometimes superior forces.
This classic archetype continued
for decades thereafter, building to modern classics such as Steven Spielberg’s Saving
Private Ryan and HBO’s lavish miniseries, Band of Brothers, both of which
gained their power from a rich tapestry of characters about whom we cared very,
very deeply.
It would appear that this cinematic
model has fallen out of favor.
Writer/director David Ayer’s Fury presents the latter days of the European campaign as the equivalent of
an inner-city street fight between drug gangs, with the grunts on our side no
better than the animals wearing the Nazi cross. The so-called “good guys” in
this unpalatable story seem modeled on the thugs who tortured and humiliated
Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib; early on, in fact, we’re granted a sequence of
American GIs behaving just that badly with a captured German soldier.
It’s interesting — carrying this
observation even further — that this story’s sole act of genuine kindness, of
benevolent altruism, is offered by one of those aforementioned Nazi monsters.
We could call it dramatic irony, but I’m not willing to give Ayer that much
credit.
Three of the five primary
characters in this film are one-dimensional brutes granted only a hiccup of
actual characterization: superficial affectations implied solely by nicknames
such as Gordo, Bible and Coon-Ass.
(Just in passing, I’d love to declare
a moratorium on movies with characters who never seem to have real names, but
instead are granted stupid monikers better suited to comic book villains. It
has become a tiresome and frankly irritating cliché.)
Our other two protagonists, while
graced with a bit more presence and personality, aren’t that much more likable
... but we eventually bond with them, to a degree, solely because we’ve gotta
care about somebody in this mean-spirited mess.
And “mean-spirited” is this
film’s prevailing tone: no surprise, since Ayer is the enraged scripter of
nihilistic cop dramas such as Training Day and End of Watch, and earlier
this year wrote and directed the offensively deplorable Arnold Schwarzenegger
vehicle, Sabotage. Ayer clearly doesn’t think much of his fellow man, and a
little of that contemptuous vitriol goes a long way.
Given this new film’s 134-minute
length, that’s a very long way.
