Cliché, Contrived and Various Other C Words...

Rating: 4/10 (2 December 2014)

I'm struggling to see why this film is so highly rated on here. The final battle scene is so ludicrous that it ruined the movie completely. It actually felt like the director simply abandoned the project and handed it over to someone else such was the paradigm shift in style.
Prior to this the film was alright but didn't really offer anything new to the genre besides the setting of the tank. Whilst it was good to see a story about a tank crew rather than yet another film focused on infantry it was ultimately let down by the contrived action scenes.
The first battle with the German tank demonstrated how out matched allied tanks were and seemed to show vaguely realistic tank warfare tactics however the outcome of it was fairly predictable. You knew that all the other tanks were going to get taken out and leave them to go it alone.
Ultimately the final battle just made me give up on the film entirely and more or less tune out until the end. There was no logic in a three hundred strong SS battalion throwing themselves headlong at a stranded tank. Their initial tactic of ambushing them by lighting some fires and pretending to be blown was clever but after that it just turned into a bewildering suicidal turkey shoot which apparently went on for so long that it turned to night halfway through.
The story feels like it was vaguely inspired by that of the Fray Bentos tank from WWI. However in that (true) story the Germans didn't have much choice but to engage the tank as it was stranded so close to their lines. Hand-held antitank weaponry didn't really exist what with tanks being so new and hence they did clamber on the machine and try and chuck grenades inside.
In Fury it is never clear why the SS don't just fall back and hit the thing with the vast supply of antitank weaponry they are seen to be carrying instead of just running headlong at it with rifles and grenades. Even just cutting their losses and bypassing the crossroads through the dark fields would have made more sense than wasting half your number to kill one wounded tank.
I gave up entirely when it showed one of their commanders ordering them to attack it by just running at it. Or when they had to go outside to get ammo (for some reason). Then predictably the crew all get killed one by one in an array of horrific situations and upon each death the action seemingly stops and leaves everyone a minute of silence to grieve. Oh except for Brad Pitt who was granted a high resistance to bullets by the gods of dramatic effect who were determined to give him an over the top ending and facilitate the escape of the token new recruit.
Utterly cliché ridden tripe. By all means watch it as an action film and enjoy it but anyone saying this is emotional or that it demonstrates the true horror of war is just plain wrong.
'Fury' is Rambo set in World War Two where Brad Pitt is filling in for Stallone.