Fury: The Tales of Ronan Pierce (2015)

Director: Kevin A. McCarthy

Cast: Michael McCarthy, Jordan Elizabeth, Kane Hodder

Synopsis: An embittered rogue cop hunts down the sadist who murdered his daughter and abducted his wife.

Clearly smitten with the Sin City movies, the brothers McCarthy have constructed their own sleazy graphic novel cityscape on a fraction of the budget that was lavished upon Miller and Rodriguez’s ultra-stylistic violence fest. Fury is a crude, dark, incoherent mess, but it has a kind of hyper-kinetic energy and some arresting visuals which go a little way towards compensating for the kind of acting we normally only see coming from sweaty American wrestlers.

Co-writer and producer Michael McCarthy also takes on the lead role of vigilante cop Ronan Pierce, a man tormented by anonymous DVDs of his wife being tortured by the masked sadist who is also responsible for murdering Pierce’s daughter. Naturally, this kind of unsporting behaviour motivates Pierce to go rogue in order to track down the madman who destroyed his life. It’s a mission which takes him on a journey into the depths of Harbor City’s criminal underworld, including a little diversion into the organ harvesting industry.

Fury is one of those movies that feels as if its reason for existing has more to do with the fantasies and fetishes of its creators than any desire on their part to make an artistic or commercial impact – it’s almost as if they really don’t care if anybody else gets to watch their movie. You certainly wouldn’t want to spend too much time in Harbor City, especially if you’re a young woman, most of whom end up hanging in chains by their wrists while they await abuse at the hands of an assortment of creeps and low-lifes. The only female character with some control over her own destiny is an abductee named Karina, who makes good use of her nutcracker knees to win freedom from enslavement and worse. She’s played by Jordan Elizabeth, and she and Harry Aspinwall, who plays the part of Pierce’s tormentor, are the only two people in the film to give performances that come even remotely close to professional.

McCarthy uses every trick he knows to inject a malevolent urgency into the storyline, but the sheer amateurism of most aspects of the movie will eventually wear down most viewers. If nothing else, Fury: The Tales of Ronan Pierce is probably the only movie you’ll ever see in which a man is beaten to death with a fish…

(Reviewed 25th November 2015)