Uncertain Glory.

Rating: 5/10 (6 August 2015)

I expected more from the movie but more turned out to be less.
It's really a "last stand" story except that in the Spring of 1945 American tankers weren't making much of a last stand. That's the way the movie presents it. But the real 7th Cavalry was the Wehrmacht, who were just about out of everything except boys and old men, fanatic SS troops, and great big-assed Tiger tanks that our M-4 Shermans couldn't hope to cope with, despite the newer model having been up-gunned and despite there being far more Shermans than Tigers.
We also had air superiority and a vast advantage in artillery, so we were plowing our way through a nearly spent Germany. Yet that doesn't stop the movie from turning It's a grim story, all rain, muck, and mud, and a Sherman tank with "FURY" painted on the barrel. That barrel was part of a high-velocity 76 mm. cannon, which was an improvement over the earlier variant's 75 mm. But the movie doesn't explain any of that because that's not where it wants to go.
And that raises the question of where the movie DOES want to go. My answer is firm. I don't know.
It's another CGI extravaganza but not that much of an improvement over the "Great Tank Battles" that can be seen on YouTube. Brad Pitt is the tank commander and he's a pretty lousy guy who commits war crimes and tells the newly arrived audience proxy member to go screw a German girl they've discovered in an abandoned house. "If you don't take her in the bedroom, I will." Improbably -- IMPOSSIBLY -- she seems to fall in love with him after one roll in the hay, and after these five greasy aliens have occupied her shabby flat and eaten her food.
Pitt's main characteristics, aside from his authoritarianism and sadism, is his desire to kill Germans. In the end it leads to the death of all the crew members but one.
The supporting crew members are grimy stereotypes: the Bible-thumping gunner, the Latino driver, and the drawling Southern loader. The junior soldier is a greenhorn clerk redirected into tank service as the assistant gunner. He gets a swift, wide-eyed education in warfare while desperately trying to survive and integrate with his unwelcoming, veteran crew mates.
One of the crew -- I forget which -- is given an especially repulsive appearance and demeanor. He slobbers freely. He has a distinctive and very ugly haircut. I had a feeling that the director and the make up folks would love to have shaved his head bald and given him a Goth tattoo but even THEY realized that it might give the game away.
Well -- a virtue of the movie. You get a better feel for the crowded, painted, steel interior of the tank that I've seen in any other movie.
Otherwise, if you need a mindless adrenalin fix, this is probably the answer.