A great film about the effects of war on man

Rating: 9/10 (9 March 2016)

This movie has got so many negative reviews I had to write my own opinion. I've seen quite a many war films, and for me this was top-ten material.
Many of the negative reviews here completely miss the point of this film. It's not a documentary of WWII US Army combined arms tactics. It's a movie about five guys inside a tank, and in my opinion it does that job really well. In that sense, this movie could as well happen in any theatre of war, or in any war. The tankers could as well be Germans, or Soviet, or Japanese. The movie could be set in Afghanistan and it wouldn't change the fundamental idea.
What I think this movie is about is the effect of war on man. We see rugged and stressed soldiers trying to get to the end of the day, just to start it over the next day. We see men who are extremely bonded together, yet way too used to see their mates die. There are no good or bad guys in this movie. One moment they are ruthless and crazy, even evil, and the next they are loyal and understanding. They hate and love each other at the same time. I'd imagine this could happen after years of constant war. And this is just what the movie excels at - the acting and the dynamics of the cast is very good an plausible. It's a true piece of art of method acting.
Of course there are the usual movie dynamics - there's a beginning, a middle part and an ending, for example - which some reviewers seem to take as game-breaking clichés, but I felt the movie was very self-aware of this and tried to take a fresh angle. Yes, the movie has it's clichés, but I thought them as not bad writing, but more like a commentary on war movies. Mostly it's the characters, who are quite familiar archetypes, and the whole point seems to take these types and put them in a different perspective, it being the battle fatigue and it's effect on the men and the bond between them.
I said the story would work as well in any war, but regardless of that the attention to details in the movie is astonishing. I think in this category the movie surpasses every preceding WWII movie. The equipment doesn't just be periodically accurate, but the field modifications and looted gear seem to be just right. One reviewer was upset that one of the war trophy medals that we can see in the background a few times had a ribbon, when the medals were actually worn without. That is the historical inaccuracy this (apparently quite competent in WWII props) reviewer found from the movie. I think it says quite a lot of the details.
Most of the critic concern on the battle scenes. Some of it is sound, but a lot of it is not very accurate. Reviewers are upset because German cannons didn't hit on the first shot, or because they made poor tactical choices. Many are enraged because the US soldiers execute a POW. Seems like for some people, "realism" equals "Wehrmacht Tactical Manual" or "Geneva convention", and obviously this movie is not at all about them. It's about war-worn, desperate and very, very tired people who try to stay alive. One must understand these are the final weeks of the war, and the German army is only a shadow of its former might. The remaining soldiers consist of children, retirees and a few tired veterans who very well know they have no chance. The Waffen-SS had long since abandoned it's recruitment criteria, consisting at this point of nothing more than standard Wehrmacht units (besides, it's status as an elite force altogether can be debated). Excluding the over-the-top final fight, I think the battle scenes are plausible, although presented in an action-packed format. There are lots of lucky hits and misses that bend the credibility, but nothing that truly breaks it. And in the end, the survival in real war was/is quite considerably a matter of luck.
Many have compared this movie to Saving Private Ryan. I think it's a totally different viewpoint. Ryan was a homage to the veterans (which they undoubtedly deserve), with all it's waving flags and lovable characters. It showed the scenery, battles and events, but with all the dramatic scenes and cheesy soundtrack the psychology of the characters, the effects of war on them, was left unturned. Fury, on the other hand, is a movie just about that, the stress and psychology of war. And in that front it works extremely well.
It is possible that the war was not always this grim, but in its worst it most definitely was.