Pitt: “Fury” is a film that gets into the minds of soldiers

“Fury” is not a conventional World War II movie but rather “an effort to get into the soldier’s mind,” actor Brad Pitt, who has the lead role in the new film directed by David Ayer, said.

Pitt, who attended the London Film Festival, joined Ayer at a press conference over the weekend at a hotel along with some of the other actors in the movie, including Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Michael Pena and John Bernthal.

In the movie, U.S. Army Sgt. Collier (Pitt) is the commander of a tank crew bent on a suicidal mission deep inside Germany during the last months of WWII.

Five years after his role in “Inglorious Basterds,” the American actor returns to the conflict with a different take since most of the story unfolds inside the armored vehicle that Pitt described as “home” for him and the rest of the cast, a perception he says many soldiers shared during the war.

Full of combat scenes, “Fury” is also the story of Norman (Lerman), a young soldier with only eight months in the Army and assigned to the tank crew under Pitt.

As the mission progresses, Norman’s psychological evolution will take him from a rookie unable to fire a gun to a soldier ready to kill ruthlessly to survive when a Nazi bombardment kills Emma, the young German girl with whom he had a love affair.

Ayer said his movie shows how WWII combatants were “common individuals like anyone’s friend or neighbor, and how their daily experience could be aboard a tank.”

The director of films such as “Harsh Times” (2005) and “End of Watch” (2012), and a script writer for “Training Day” (2001), agreed with the cast that filming scenes inside a tank was “complicated.”

“Fury” opened last weekend at theaters across Britain and the United States.