Brad Pitt’s WWII drama Fury, directed by Training Day writer David Ayer, has closed the London Film Festival. Pitt plays ‘Wardaddy’, the commander of a five-man Sherman tank crew caught behind enemy lines during the Allies’ final push in April 1945.
Speaking at a press conference ahead of the film’s European premiere last night (October 19), Pitt said: “It is an amazing fact of human nature that one year we can be chopping each other up, the next we can be sharing a pint. We continually devolve into conflict, no matter how much we evolve.”
When asked if he could imagine being capable of going to war and killing to survive, Pitt spoke of “the warrior within all of us” and said he hoped soldiers who served in WWII would feel “respectfully recognised” by Ayer’s film.
Pitt was shooting Fury at the same time as his wife, Angelina Jolie, was making WWII adventure Unbroken. “IWe don’t normally work at the same time but we got our schedules cocked up,” said the actor. “I was studying the European theatre, she was studying the Pacific theatre. I was studying tanks, she was studying bombers. But it was good fun for us. Fury deals with the psychic damage of the soldier. Her film focuses on the triumph of the human spirit against horrific odds. Unbroken is a very uplifting and very beautiful film.”
Unbroken is based on the true-life tale of the Olympian Louis Zamperini (played by Jack O’Connell) and his struggle to survive as a Japanese prisoner of war. The film is released on December 26.
Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan was awarded the prize for the festival’s Best Film during a ceremony on Saturday night.
The 58th London Film Festival recorded a record audience figure of 163,300, a 7.5% increase on 2013.
Fury is released in cinemas October 22. Watch the trailer below.