Fury: CALL Discussion notes

In April, 1945, Germany is [spoiler alert] losing the war but is madly taking and losing every life that it can. Veteran Sergeant Don (“Top”) Collier leads his five-man crew in a Sherman tank behind enemy lines in a desperate foray through the shot-up landscape. The characters are the usual emblem of Melting Pot America: driver Trini (Gordo) Garcia (Michael Pena), Grady (Coon Ass) Travis (Jon Bernthal), gunner Boyd (Bible) Swan (Shia LaBeouf) and the newly assigned typist Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman), whom Top has to convert to manhood, i.e., killer. In a conquered town the men invade the apartment of two frightened women, the mature Irma (Anamaria Marinca) and her young cousin Emma (Alicia von Rittberg). In the finale the men defend a crossroads to the death. Only Norman survives, saved by a young German soldier who doesn’t rat him out.  

Questions

1. The film recalls the WW II and Korean War films of besieged platoons, in which the ethnically diverse US gang fights off the anonymous, uniform totalitarian enemy. How does the film reflect our times? (Remember: A historic film is about the time it’s made, not just the time it’s set.)
2. How is Norman a norm or normal? He earns the war name Machine.
3. What themes are emphasized by the film’s dominant setting inside a tank, e.g., vs the traditional trench, open battlefield, etc?
4. What’s the metaphor in the Sherman tank’s speed and maneuverability vs the German Panzer, heavier, slower but with thicker plate and an armour-piercing gun?
5. What themes emerge from the battle scenes? From the scenes between them? 
6. What is the point of the scene with the two women? What are the conventional/familiar elements and what the inflections or surprises? How does the dynamic develop? How does it inflect the men’s relationship?
7. Why are the film and the tank both named Fury? Hint: How is fury a weapon and/or a shell?
8. How does the film relate to director Ayer’s earlier features: Street Kings, End of Watch. Sabotage — as director — and The Fast and the Furious, Training Day, Dark Blue, SWAT — as screenwriter? Is he into male bonding in violent morally complex situations or what? What does he gain in moving from gangs and cops to these soldiers?
9. What’s the film’s colour scheme? So what?
10. What’s the metaphor in taking our heroes behind enemy lines?
11. What’s meant by the German sparing Norman’s life? What else in the film does that relate to?
12. What’s the significance of the opening scene, where we see a rider and horse approaching, then identify the rider as Nazi officer? A white horse gallops past the tank awakening Norman at the end.
13. What’s the significance of the end credits played against a background of red-tinted newsreel WW II footage?
14. Why does Top know both German and his Biblical verses?
15. Why show the Germans hanging their “cowards”? How does it relate to anything else in the film?
16. In a film of almost non-stop battle is there any relief? Why not?
17. Of what is the crossroads a metaphor?
18. How do you read the duel between the tanks and the last-stage standoff? Is there the ghost of the western here?
19. What’s the point in the men calling Don Top and his official tag (war-name) being Wardaddy?
20. Why does Top criticize Gordo’s speaking Spanish?
21. Why does this army operate with so little information about the situation?
22. How would this film work on a first date?
23. How does the film depict dehumanization?
24. Is there a connection between brotherhood and brutalization? It is the nature of a group to exclude others even as it defines its own membership. What encloses some excludes the others.

Consider the following dialogue:

1. “The dying’s not done. The killing’s not done.”
2. Why do four of the men say “Best job I ever had”? It follows “That’s the job.”
3. Bible recalls the Biblical verse “And I heard the voice of the Lord saying: Whom shall I send and who will go for Us? And…I said, Here am I, send me!” Ellison says “Send me.” Top adds: “Book of Isaiah, chapter six.” So?
4. “It will end, soon. But before it does, a lot more people have to die.”
5. “Ideals are peaceful. History is violent.”
6. Top: Fury “is my home.”
7. “You see this right here? That is your heart line. You’re gonna have one great love in your life.”
8. “I had the best gunner in the entire United States Army in S.E. Now I have you.”
9. “It’s our land.”
10. “We can kill them but we can’t fuck them.”
11. “Why don’t they stop? “Would you?”
12. When Top summons Norman for his first kill he says “Come on, son.”
13. After Norman has mowed down a line of Nazis one colleague says “You should’ve let ehm burn” and Top says “It wasn’t nothing.” How wasn’t it nothing?
14. “Want to see what a kid can do?”
15. “Don’t get close to anyone.”