Hype can't even paint this film as anything near reality

Rating: 3/10 (18 April 2015)

For all it's hype about creating a real "feeling" for this movie, the Columbia team hasn't managed to fool many people. I appreciated the many reviewers who saw how unreal this film is. Now, how can anyone today – seven decades after WWII know what was real? Well, by the stories and news we grew up with during and in the years right after the war. And the many books, novels, diaries, and movies produced in the first few decades after the war. And, in the newsreels, we watched in theaters, and the live action filming for documentaries. Until the 21st century, most criticism of the Hollywood productions about WWII were that they often glorified the American GIs in combat, or they too often involved romances that the bulk of the fighting men never experienced, or that the equipment used for the movies wasn't accurate. The early WWII films didn't show the graphic gore of war that "Saving Private Ryan" ushered into films in 1998; but many of those films showed the angst, anguish, fear, fatigue, and other aspects of war on the men fighting it. And, most did not make the enemy out to be inept; but very formidable combatants.
A special bonus short documentary with the DVD of "Fury" has interviews with some of the main actors. Brad Pitt, Shia LeBeouf, Logan Lerman and Jon Bernthal talk about their preparation for the film. A Navy SEAL team apparently "trained" the actors for a week of what GIs would have gone through in basic training. So, their testimonials were that they learned to bond as a group in that one week. Really? And, while basic training is similar in all the services, would the Navy know more about tank training? One suspects that the movie makers were trying to hype the film by using the latest men of the military spotlight in their movie project. In reality, I doubt that the actors would have had any better training or learned to bond as brothers than if their trainers had been Special Forces, Rangers, Paratroopers, Marines, or regular Army training units. Hmmm. Why not even an armored unit?
The narrator of the short documentary said the movie makers met behind closed doors with a few WWII vets – now in their 90s, from the 2nd Armored Division. He said that the vets told them stories that they had never told even to family members. Interestingly, the filmmakers don't claim that the movie is based in any way on what they heard from the veterans. Again, some modern day Hollywood hype, I suspect.
I appreciated the comments of those early reviewers who point out some of the most obvious aspects of the film that deny its reality. This is the most foul-mouthed bunch of GIs I've ever heard and can imagine. Yes, those men of my father's age were known to curse, swear or cuss on occasion. But it was not their common language. I served in the Army from 1961 to 1964, and we too used an occasional cuss or swear word. Occasional, not part of our running, everyday language. The same is true today, the younger service people tell me. So, the "Fury" filmmakers aren't giving us a look at reality of the closing days of combat in WWII Germany. No, they are giving us here a modern portrayal of a time past.
This "unreality" check applies equally to the portrayal of the Germans in the long closing battle scene. Brad Pit's character, Sergeant Don Collier even notes that the approaching Germans are a crack SS battalion. And, the film seems to portray such. So this large force of crack German troops in so inept that the Americans are able to mow most of them down in a very long pitched battle from one immobile tank position smack dab out in the open. The Germans fire a couple anti- tank torpedoes that don't do much damage, and they don't shoot anymore.
Besides these major detractions for this film, "Fury" has a weak script and character parts that just aren't very interesting or believable. Can anyone imagine that all, most or even a significant number of American GIs were all so completely hardened and able to dismiss killing as though it were nothing? From the beginning, the performances seemed forced. It seemed to me that the selling point for the film is intended to be the amount of gore and fabricated and exaggerated action that they could produce. The film seemed more to me like a video game than a realistic portrayal of a unit in WWII combat.
It seems that Hollywood is trying to reinvent WWII for audiences in the 21st century. This is one modern film that just doesn't accurately reflect the culture of the 1940s. So, it doesn't have a place in my war film library. If young buffs today want a more accurate "feel" for WWII, they can watch almost any of the many Hollywood films made about the war by the major studios through the 1980s. And, even later films by the movie industries in European countries.