Sony gives WWII tank drama “Fury” a new 4K upgrade

Bill Kelley III
Jul 5
6 min read

Updated: Jul 7

4K ULTRA HD REVIEW / HDR SCREENSHOTS

Brad Pitt plays Sgt. Don “Wardaddy” Collier, in David Ayer’s World War II tank drama “Fury.” The film’s worldwide box office topped $211 million. (2) A German shell ricochets off a U.S. Sherman tank.

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4K screenshots via the filmmaker Mode courtesy of Sony Pictures - Click for an Amazon purchase

“FURY: LIMITED EDITION”

4K Ultra HD & Blu-ray; 2014; R for strong sequences of war violence, some grisly images, and profanity throughout; Digital copy via Amazon Video (4K), Apple TV (4K), Fandango Home (4K), Movies Anywhere (4K), YouTube (4K)

Best extra: “No Guts, No Glory: The Horrors of Combat”

SEVEN YEARS AGO, just before Memorial Day, Sony Pictures released the grim World War II drama “Fury” starring Brad Pitt on 4K Ultra HD. It had become commonplace for the Hollywood studios to release a war film or two or three on physical media during the month of May, a reminder of the sacrifice servicemen and women have given for our freedom and the American way of life.

In the last few years, Sony started a 4K rerelease program to provide upgrades for first-generation 4K titles without Dolby Vision, adding the more advanced HDR grading process, while also tweaking the standard HDR10 levels. The new 4K discs are packaged in the more expensive and more profitable Steelbooks editions.

This month, Sony releases the 4K upgrade of “Fury,” just as Brad Pitt returns to the silver screen in Joseph Kosinski’s follow-up to “Top Gun: Maverick,” with the exciting racing film “F1: The Movie,” considered one of the summer’s best.

(1) The “Fury” rolls into an Allied camp in Western Germany. (2) Hillbilly mechanic Grady “Coon-Ass” Travis and the rest of the Fury crew are down after their assistant driver “Red” was killed by a German round. (3) Hundreds of German P.O.W.s are held at the Allied camp. (4&5) New assistant driver Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman) gets orders to mop up Red’s remains inside the tank, and he discovers a portrait of Red and his love covered with blood.

“Fury” is the story of a tight-knit American tank crew struggling to survive the final weeks of World War II in the heart of Nazi Germany.

U.S. Navy veteran and filmmaker producer/writer/director David Ayer (“End of Watch”) says he was determined not to make “everyone else’s war film,” in the 30-minute featurette “No Guts, No Glory.” “War is a really bad thing. And anyone who’s served in the military and gone downrange, and experienced hostile fire and lost a buddy, or seen death, or seen civilian deaths knows that, knows that it’s bad…. its carnage, its chaos, its destruction,” he says.

He remained unwavering in his depiction of combat, revealing glimpses of the “hell that these men endured” inside the thin-skinned Sherman tank labeled “Fury.” “This dying, fanatical regime is doing everything it can to stop them.”

Much of his script was based on reports, eyewitness accounts, and memoirs. “These are all things that happened in the war,” Ayer says. He viewed thousands of pictures and hours of news footage taken by the US Army Signal Corps. Images showed Allied soldiers in mud up to their knees during the spring of 1945. It was Europe’s worst winter in 50 years.

(1) The haircut that changed men’s fashion. (2) Hundreds of German refugees head away from the front lines. (3) A German bazooka round hits a Sherman tank. (4) Captain “Old Man” Waggoner (Jason Isaac) gives Sgt. Collier orders to take out three German anti-tank guns to rescue a platoon of U.S. soldiers.

Ayer and producer John Lesher filmed “Fury” in England, where they had access to a number of armored vehicles, both German and American, and the naturally gloomy skies of the United Kingdom. Hundreds and hundreds of extras were fitted with period-accurate wardrobes, and given six days of weapons training. The production resurrected the last-running German Tiger II tank, with its 88-millimeter gun, from a British war museum for a duel between it and four Shermans. One hit from the Tiger and the tank becomes an inferno. The only defense is hitting the Tiger from all sides; the Sherman’s strength is in its numbers.

The king of Fury’s five-man crew is Sgt. Don “Wardaddy” Collier, played at the time, 50-year-old Pitt. He orders steering and firing commands to his crew via headsets. Wardaddy is outfitted with a shoulder holster and .45 caliber six-shooter, and his weapon of choice, a captured German StG 44, with a 30-round clip – the grandfather to the AK-47. Pitt’s military haircut, super tight on the sides and long on top, became the fashion hairstyle for men for two years after the release of “Fury.”

Wardaddy’s crew includes Michael Peña as driver Trini “Gordo” Garcia of East L.A.; Jon Bernthal as hillbilly mechanic Grady “Coon-Ass” Travis; Shia LaBeouf in his best onscreen performance as the Christian gunner Boyd “Bible” Swan, and Logan Lerman as rookie assistant driver Norman Ellison, only eight-weeks out of boot camp with no tank training. His first duty is to mop up the blood and guts from the guy he’s replaced.

Inside, the Sherman is cramped and dangerous. The men curse like no World War II film has seen before, an excess of a hundred F-bombs, balanced by prayer and quotes from the Scriptures. Horseplay becomes a temporary release from their wartime nightmare. “There’s no way you walk out of there without some kind of psychological dent,” Pitt says.

(1-3) Only six weeks removed from Boot Camp, assistant driver Norman Ellison is in shock during his first battle action. (4) One of “Fury’s” most terrifying moments is when "Wardaddy" forces Norman to shoot a German soldier. (5&6) U.S. Army rolls into a German village. (7) Sgt. Collier discovers the Nazi Party members had commit suicide. (8&9) After liberating the German village, Wardaddy and Norman have breakfast with two German ladies, and Grady disrupts the breakfast, which director Ayer describes as a “bad Thanksgiving dinner.”

VIDEO

The original 4K master, sourced from the 35mm film stock (2.39:1 aspect ratio) and captured with Panavision anamorphic lens, has been recycled for this new presentation. Gritty and coarse film grain continues to dominate the visual experience. The HDR color grading is nearly identical between the 2018 4K disc and this new edition. It’s heavy on browns, grays, and greens, with bursts of orange and red from explosions, and a shimmer of pinks and greens from tracer bullets. It’s the first WWII film to show tracers; the ammunition contains phosphorus that glows.

The Germans used green, and the Allies used a pinkish-red, while in the Pacific, the Japanese used purple or blue. It’s a way for the machine gunner to “trace” rounds to the target. “As a kid, I was fascinated by the war footage of the Navy Corsair fighter plane over the Pacific. You’d see that gunsight footage of those tracers, and they were so bright,” Ayer says.

Everything was encoded onto a 100 GB disc, just like the original 4K, including 90 minutes of extras, so the video bitrate is also identical, averaging in the mid-50 Megabits per second range.

We did notice one difference, a slight uptick with the HDR10 peak brightness numbers ranging from 910 to 938 nits, and the average light level from 310 to 355 nits. But on the screen, it was indistinguishable.

On the previous 4K, the subtitles for the German language scenes were too large, overwhelming the picture compared to what you see theatrically. This time the subtitles are smaller with a light typeface and a perfect size for my nine-foot screen.

(1) A Sherman tank doesn’t survive a Tiger II battle. (2&3) Sgt. Collier orders instructions to gunner Boyd “Bible” Swan (Shia LaBeouf). (4&5) The smaller Sherman tank fires toward the German Tiger II, which takes a direct hit, and a German officer returns fire with his handgun.

AUDIO

The Dolby Atmos soundtrack has been recycled, with the soundstage featuring a deep bass response from the Sherman’s engine and 75-millimeter gun, mimicking the DTS-HD soundtrack of the older Blu-ray. Once those effects are pushed to height speakers, it produces an all-encompassing experience from the artillery shells to five P-51 Mustangs buzzing at treetop level over the Fury and four other Shermans.

The dialogue and musical score from composer Steven Price (“Gravity”), who uses armory and weaponry as instruments for a primal haunting sound, are nicely balanced against thundering blasts and gunfire.

EXTRAS

There are five featurettes: “Tiger 131” footage of the German tank as hundreds arrive to see it in action; “Heart of Fury” detailing how they built the interior set of a Sherman tank – 10 percent larger than a real one – with removable panels to place the camera and lights. It can turn just like a real one; a gimbal provides the rocking motion.

“Clash of Armor” demonstrates the difference between the U.S. Sherman and the German Tiger, with its superior armor. Only 1,300 Tigers were pitted against a flood of 50,000 Shermans. The typical ploy was five Shermans against one Tiger. The Shermans would try to outflank it, but soldiers went into the maneuver knowing they would lose at least one tank.

“No Guts, No Glory: The Horrors of Combat,” the making-of featurette, has cast and crew interviews. “The Tanks of Fury” is a 45-minute insider’s view of the production with interviews and behind-the-scenes footage from the Smithsonian Channel.

“Fury” is still one powerful story, either with the older 4K edition or with this newer Dolby Vision option, showing the intense struggle to complete the mission and to stay alive until the fall of Berlin.

― Bill Kelley III, High-Def Watch producer