Farty

Rating: 5/10 (22 June 2015)

What a strange film! I've seen some great war films and some dire ones, but also some strange ones too, just like this. And what to make of it? Some of the battle scenes were pretty good, especially the battle against the German Panza tank, which was directed quite well, but other battle scenes were bonkers unrealistic. The final battle was ridiculous. Will someone please fire one of those RPG/Bazooka shells out of the box? Will you stop rushing the tank with bayonets, for God's sake, and so on... And then the lad escaping through the lower hatch, getting detected and not being rooted out, punched to little bits and killed by the mad angry Germans who had just lost an entire battalion. I don't know why film directors sometimes treat their audiences like wozacks, but this one did in droves.
There were some really good bits though. All the soldiers looked battle-hardened and up for it. The scenery was great, as well as the costumes and other effects being very realistic, but then we're treated to the clichés, the odd scenes of potentially-about-to-be-raped German girl falling in love with the boy soldier because he plays piano music and beds her very nicely, I guess, and all the other bizarre scenes and other bits taken from Saving Private Ryan, but not done too well, I guess we've got to take it with a pinch of salt. And see the humour in it.
And then, the bizarre cinematography, switching between a boys face, an overhead burning tank, the boys face again, and so on... much like a TV sitcom, badly switching in and out due to lack of camera panning options. It felt really cheap and badly done. It bemused me. And not forgetting the Star Wars laser fire, with streams of pink and blue light emitting from various gun emplacements and entrenched battlements. So weird.
The final battle scene should have been a parody, much like the German war propaganda featurette involving the sniper, from Inglorious Basterds, but this isn't a Tarantino film, but dead serious! And when all the Germans regularly fire and miss, even at close range... forget it, it's not worth your money, time, etc.
The overall ratings for 'Fury' are obviously rigged, because this film isn't anywhere near a 7.6 out of 10. But it's still quite entertaining, sometimes in a Battlefield Earth, so awful it's quite good sort of way.