David Ayer
Fury

The failure of the Italian Moviemax delayed the arrival in Italy of "Fury", the fifth feature film by David Ayer. Eight months after its release in U.S. theaters, Lucky Red distributed the film at the beginning of June.

A significant budget (approximately 70 million dollars) and the competition from more advertised and more "marketable" titles (notably the new "Mad Max" by George Miller). Thus, all the conditions for a poor box office were present. Unexpectedly, however, the audience responded, and the earnings tripled the initial expenditure, and "Fury" carved out its small space in the cinematic landscape of 2015.

David Ayer had already shown good potential in the past, from his debut "Harsh Times" to the decent noir "Street Kings". With "Fury", Ayer returns to the military world he was once part of, bringing to the big screen a new filmic chapter on the Second World War. The war is coming to an end, and the Allied forces are penetrating more and more into the devastated Nazi Germany. In all this, the contribution of armored vehicles is crucial, and "Fury" is one of them, commanded by Sergeant "Wardaddy" (Brad Pitt). By his side, a handful of loyal men in the last phase of the war.

Lacking a real plot, "Fury" is what one would call an "old-fashioned war movie". A solid film, with a rhythm designed not to be exclusively frenetic and "action" but also "classic", capable of conveying that sense of grandeur that characterizes the genre. It is precisely the alternation of different phases in the economy of the film that is one of Ayer's good ideas: the director cleverly mixes long combat sequences almost in video game style (who said COD?) with moments of greater "reflection" and stagnation of action. In the "action" sequences, one can sense a realism and a staging that immediately recalls the television masterpiece "Band of Brothers", which in turn owes a debt to "Saving Private Ryan" (but is decidedly more successful on a conceptual level).

A highly respectable technical department, however, is penalized by a stumbling screenplay (curated by Ayer himself). Ayer manages to skillfully sidestep the dualistic clash of good Americans/bad Germans, but falls into another writing trap. While the Quentin Tarantino-style dialogues manage to elicit a few smiles, the main characters are far too stereotypical: from the ultra-religious "Bible" (Shia LaBeouf), to the crazy but good-hearted Grady, from the marginalized Mexican to the young and inexperienced Norman, whose relationship with "Wardaddy" will symbolically become too much like that of father and son's education/formation. Even the ending falls into the box of "already seen things" and has that hint of patriotism and forced heroism that, besides being implausible, is also a bit drawn out.

David Ayer's fifth work is a mix of good and less good things. A raw and excellently directed and photographed film that unfortunately loses itself in the subtleties of a screenplay not up to the technical level. We are still faced with a valuable product, a noteworthy "war movie", among the best seen in cinema in recent years.