Out of touch

Rating: 5/10 (17 November 2017)

This is my first review on IMDb and it is just to express my bewilderment regarding the rating of this movie.
My issue with the film is that the tone of it feels off. Being filled with all the clichés already mentioned in many reviews, it would work great as a tongue-in-cheek B-movie type self-parody, but instead it attempts to take itself seriously, which leads to a very bizarre cinematic experience.
The film is set in the last weeks of the war, when, in truth, German forces were outnumbered, outgunned, demoralized and surrendering to the Americans in droves, as they knew that their treatment by the Russians would have been cruel. At this point of the war, no one wanted to do anything especially stupid, like get killed, as both sides knew the inevitable outcome of the war. Expecting the audience to fall for this story of battle-weary ragtag American underdogs fighting superior numbers and equipment comes across as being incredibly out of touch, and it makes you question whether the production team really did any homework on this.
The clichés would have been great entertainment if the film was more "Expendables" than the Normandy aftermath scene of "Saving Private Ryan". The historical inaccuracies and outright shortcuts, like experienced SS troops get their asses handed to them by one immobilized tank, cause spontaneous laughter, only to be followed up by Shia LaBeouf's best attempt at a thousand yard stare. It almost feels like the editing is at fault, but reflecting on what has happened earlier in the movie, you realize that these failures are not the result of an accident, but instead are in line with the director's vision.
For me, the pinnacle of the failures of the movie comes in the last moments of the film, where I thought I heard the SS officer rally his troops by yelling something along the lines of "Sie sind untermensch!" I seriously hope I misheard that, but in any case I let out a deep sigh. Germans hardly considered Americans to be sub-human, fascist doctrine mostly painted Slavs as servile sub-humans, so this rallying cry epitomizes how out of touch the film crew really was.
The film would have worked for me, and for many others I think, if the cast were set as German Wehrmacht soldiers. From this point of view, it would have been a breeze to capture the senselessness of fighting on the losing side, of being under equipped and demoralized. All the same characters could have died and the new recruit could have lived, but it would have been somewhat believable if they wore German uniforms (think of the ending of "Letters from Iwo Jima").
This movie is not entertaining as every other scene simply takes you out of the story and you end up scratching your head in bewilderment.
For a serious look at desperate warfare, go watch the Finnish movie "Talvisota", or the German "Stalingrad" or "Saving Private Ryan". For B-movie type self-parody, go watch "Commando". Fury is not the best of both worlds. Some things just do not mix.
5/10.