STACK Jan 123

36 / 68

DVD&BD
JANUARY 2015 JB Hi-Fi
FEATURE
036
visit
I f any filmmaker understands the nature
of life inside a war machine it is David
Ayer. The 46-year-old writer-director of
End of Watch began his working life in the US
Navy, serving onboard submarines.
“I have lived in a war machine so I
understand the life and I understand the
regard you have when you are dependent on a
machine in terms of keeping you alive,” Ayer
explains.
“In the Navy, when I first got to the boat, I
slept in the torpedo room on a weapons rack
next to a missile and if I wanted to turn over, I
had to get out of bed, turn over and slide back
in. And yet there is this idea of maintaining your
home and being ready to fight in it – it is your
living room and your office and bathroom all in
one.”
Ayer’s most recent movie is the WWII picture
Fury, which he wrote and directed. It focuses
on 24 hours in the life of a Sherman tank crew
fighting the Germans during the last months
of the war. The five-man team have served
together and suffered together through days of
combat and violence, and the bond they have
formed is made even firmer by the constricted
space in which they live and fight.
In truth, the writer-director regards the tank
crew as a family. “There is a bond that men
who face danger together have and it is very
clear in my work,” he says. “And I just loved the
idea of telling a story about a family in a tank. It
is really that simple. I wanted to tell a story of a
family under extreme conditions that lives inside
a war machine.”
The patriarch in this family is Don ‘Wardaddy’
Collier, played by three-time Oscar-nominated
actor Brad Pitt. “As a writer you have these
shadows, these shades in your head, and the
Wardaddy character was one of the first to
emerge from the mists,” Ayer says.
“It was this idea of a veteran who is an
absolute brutal warrior, yet has a big heart and
loves this family he has created. He loves his
men whose lives he is trying to preserve.”
These men are the gunner Boyd ‘Bible’
Swan (played by Shia LaBeouf); Grady ‘Coon-
Ass’ Travis, the loader (Jon Bernthal); and the
driver, Trini ‘Gordo’ Garcia (Michael Peña). The
audience meets the crew not long after their
fifth member, the assistant driver, has been
killed. His replacement is a rookie called Norman
Ellison (Logan Lerman), a typist with no tank
training who has been thrust into frontline
combat due to the US manpower shortage
during the last phase of the war.
Norman is an innocent, with no battle
experience, and it is up to Wardaddy to initiate
him into the ways of war. “It is the heart of the
movie,” says Ayer.
“Norman learns that he can’t be who he is
and expect to survive in that world, and I think
that’s part of growing up, part of life, and we all
go through that as we mature. From childhood
to adolescence and into adulthood, it has to be
dealt with and it is a painful process. Norman’s
Serving aboard submarines in the US Navy, and a love of classic war movies, provided
writer-director DAVIDAYER with the inspiration forWorldWar II film FURY.