David Ayer’s study of grizzled men in metal, Fury, is the official pick to close this year’s BFI London Film Festival. The Training Day man’s old-school war flick will be pulling down the curtain on the 58th LFF in a blaze of exploding shells, Wehrmacht panzers and hipster 1944 haircuts on October 19.
Patrolling the red carpet will be Ayer and his star, Brad Pitt, a suitably starry presence to bring the film fest to a close in a Leicester Square shindig that will be simultaneously screened in cinemas across the country. Head to the official site for details of those events.
“It’s a true pleasure to be returning to England, where we shot the film,” enthuses Ayer in the official announcement. “The fields of Oxfordshire and Bovingdon Airfield in Hertfordshire were our home for 12 weeks last year, so it’s something of a homecoming for us to present the movie at its European premiere. I’m thrilled that festival audiences will be among the first in Europe to see it.”
Ayer's movie, while a more straight-up slug of World War II action than Kelly’s Heroes or Inglourious Basterds, shares something of their gonzo band-of-brothers vibe. It’s 1945 and Pitt’s Don “Wardaddy” Collier and his Sherman crew - Boyd Swan (Shia LaBeouf), Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman), Trini Garcia (Michael Peña) and Grady Travis (Jon Bernthal) – are roll fatalistically into Germany expecting a Nazi shell with their names on it (once the Nazis have found a shell big enough) to come sailing into their lives in the near future.
Send on a borderline crazy mission behind enemy lines, this dirty (5/6s of a half-)dozen are faced with some terrifyingly panzer-shaped problems. Watch the trailer below for a refresher.
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Fury **clanks into UK cinemas on October 24 before blasting a salvo into the pick ‘n’ mix. Mark your diaries.