BFI London Film Festival to close with Fury

What could be more exciting than The Imitation Game opening the BFI London Film Festival? Well apart from the prospect of most of London coming to a standstill and getting all quivery at the knees over Benedict Cumberbatch, it is the closing night film that has really got my motor running. The European Premiere of Fury from director David Ayer is rolling into Leicester Square on Sunday 19 October and promises to close the LFF with a spectacular bang.

As far as I’m concerned, Ayer hit a pretty major stumbling block with his last film Sabotage but before that he had written and directed one of my top 3 films of 2012, End of Watch. That film had also been screened at the London Film Festival and was an intense ride around the badass streets of LA with two cops in the thick of cartels and drug dealers. Swapping the cop car for a tank, Fury takes us back to World War 2, a subject Ayer hasn’t written about since U-571. 

Starring one of the most exciting casts of the year, Fury sees Brad Pitt, (a post-meltdown) Shia LaBeouf, Michael Peña, Jon Bernthal and Logan Lerman rolling around in a Sherman tank behind enemy lines in 1945 as the war is drawing to a close. I can’t say much for little Logan Lerman yet but the rest of that cast promise big things for this film. If Ayer can capture the horror of fighting in World War 2 as well as he captured the danger of being a cop on the streets of LA, Fury will be a belting way to close this year’s BFI London Film Festival. 

No doubt Pitt, Ayer and hopefully more of the stars of the film will attend the premiere and get their snaps taken on the red carpet while delighting fans with their smiles and regaling journalists with tales of not washing and living like soldiers while working in English fields on the film. If you can’t get to the London premiere, there will be simultaneous screenings in various cinemas across the country. 

Here is a snippet about the film from the BFI LFF website:
 
‘In Fury, it is April, 1945. As the Allies make their final push in the European Theatre, a battle-hardened army sergeant named Wardaddy (Brad Pitt) commands a Sherman tank and her five-man crew on a deadly mission behind enemy lines. Outnumbered and outgunned, and with a rookie soldier thrust into their platoon, Wardaddy and his men face overwhelming odds in their heroic attempts to strike at the heart of Nazi Germany.’

Festival Director Clare Stewart calls Fury a ‘resounding cinematic achievement. Rarely is a film so successful at balancing the human drama of war with such thrilling action sequences’. David Ayer says ‘It’s a true pleasure to be returning to England, where we shot the film – 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’. 

Fury will be released across the UK on 24 October 2014. The 58th BFI London Film Festival in partnership with American Express runs from Wednesday 8 October to Sunday 19 October. The full programme for the Festival will be announced on Wednesday 3 September and tickets for public booking will open on 18 September. 

Here is the trailer:

More on The BFI London Film Festival 2014.