Fury

Fury is a 1936 American crime film directed by Fritz Lang that tells the story of an innocent man (Spencer Tracy) who narrowly escapes being burned to death by a lynch mob and the revenge he then seeks. The film was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and stars Sylvia Sidney and Tracy, with a supporting cast featuring Walter Abel, Bruce Cabot, Edward Ellis and Walter Brennan. Loosely based on the events surrounding the Brooke Hart murder in San Jose, California, the film was adapted by Bartlett Cormack and Lang from the story Mob Rule by Norman Krasna. Fury was Lang's first American film. Plot En route to meet his fiancée Katherine Grant, gas-station owner Joe Wilson is arrested on flimsy circumstantial evidence for the kidnapping of a child. Gossip soon travels around the small town, growing more distorted through each retelling, until a mob gathers at the jail. When the resolute sheriff refuses to give up his prisoner, the enraged townspeople burn down the building, throwing dynamite into the flames as they flee the scene. Unknown to anyone else there, the blast frees Joe but kills his little dog Rainbow, who had run in to comfort him in the cell. The district attorney brings the main perpetrators to trial for murder, but nobody is willing to identify the guilty, and several provide false alibis. The case seems hopeless, but then the prosecutor produces hard evidence: newsreel footage of 22 people caught in the act.