"Fury - Well done" Topic

Went to see Fury Friday night and was very happy with the movie. All of the equipment was real, (no T-34tigers, even had a real Tiger). The schmoopie love distraction that writers insist on inserting into war movies was kept to a minimum and was realistically portrayed.
Aside from some horrible German gunnery and the logs on the side of the tank deflecting an AT round it was all plausible.

The final showdown where the tank holds off 300 SS seems to last a little longer than it would in real life.
While still not Saving Private Ryan, it is one of the top war movies on my list.

I'm informed that the Tiger is a running exhibit from the Imperial War Museum.

link

Overall I liked it. But call me naive or an idealist, but I refuse to believe that many American soldiers would stand by and murder an enemy soldier in cold blood.
The SS guy I understand, but not the first one.

JimDuncanUK, from the Tank Museum, Bovington, not the Imperial War Museum. The Sherman is from there too.

I refuse to believe that many American soldiers would stand by and murder an enemy soldier in cold blood.

War crimes happen in war. They always happen. They always will happen. Some of the Jewish/American soldiers actively sought to kill Germans…especially SS. There was also that officer in "Easy Company" who was rumored to have murdered a group of German soldiers in cold blood.

I was less than impressed… 4 sherman tanks operating alone with no support… Driving down a road 10 feet from each other… Just waiting to get ambushed… A completely incompetent SS battalion just chomping at the bit to run into brad Pitts machine guns on a mobility killed sherman… That last battle should have lasted about five minutes or less…. Typical Hollywood war movie… Need some premises, no matter how redic, to get our heroes alone and outnumbered

link

There is also footage from Normandy of a US paratrooper executing German POWs. The paratrooper is walking behind a group of POWs and is apparently unaware of the camera, as it is some distance away. The paratrooper stops abruptly and opens fire with his SMG, gunning down the POWs. The film stops.

The first guy they mention that the prisoner is wearing a US coat.

@Khazarmac

Oops

there was a utube vid that showed us inf shoting gernmans who had their hands up. they were on the opposite side of a canal and they were just lite up.
not much different than some of the sh@t i saw in afghanistan…

National Review slide show stills from the movie
link

There were also incidents like this one:
US paratrooper crawls out into the open under fire to administer 1st aide to a seriously wounded German grandma. And he wasn't a medic.

I see a difference between killing someone in the act of surrendering vs killing someone who has already surrendered and several minutes have gone by.

wingleader356

I felt the same way when watching the movie. I hesitated to say anything because if you google the web you will find they used a British tank veteran as an advisor (he is labeled an RSM for those with British army experience). The actors also spent a week at the U.S. camp for armored training.

As my experience is limited to reading and playing with painted toys maybe the way to attack a Tiger was in a frontal charge, and maybe the many questions I had on the plausibility of the last battle is just my ignorance😳.

I'm kind of with wingleader356 and dantheman. Overall I did like the movie, but that last battle was a real head scratcher – 200+ Germans going against an immobile Sherman. It felt like I was watching a video game with the Germans making suicidal frontal assaults assaults! Why?! And it it got dark REALLY fast there at the end :)

> The final showdown where the tank holds off 300 SS seems
>to last a little longer than it would in real life.

>While still not Saving Private Ryan, it is one of the top
>war movies on my list.

SPR also had what I like to call the "Keystone SS" in the final battle sequence so no worries about the final battle being a little off. Still deciding if I want to see this in the theater or wait for the BluRay.

Maybe because it was the end of the war and it was a bunch of inexperienced troops hastily given weapons and the SS title. There are plenty of stories of Germans in the later part of the war doing things gamers insist no sane soldier would do.

In the Bulge, some of the FJ troops performed nowhere near what their elite title and reputation would imply. Volksgrenadier troops walking in file into US machine gun fire… all kinds of stuff.

Audie Leon Murphy (20 June 1925 – 28 May 1971)

Murphy mounted the abandoned, burning tank destroyer and began firing its .50 caliber machine gun at the advancing Germans, killing a squad crawling through a ditch towards him. For an hour, Murphy stood on the tank destroyer returning German fire from foot soldiers and advancing tanks, killing or wounding 50 Germans. He sustained a leg wound during his stand, and stopped only after he ran out of ammunition.

rare? but possible.

Duane

Maybe if the Germans were engaged at distance but when you fire your first shot when the Germans are literally crawling on your tank… And then all those panzerfausts being carried from the marching scene go missing… Oh and the worst sniper in all of WWII… I Know I'm being negative… Maybe I just had too high of expectations… I'll end up watching it again with much lower expectations and likely be more positive about the film…

It was entertaining but otherwise quite rediculous from a realism point of view quite rediculous. More of a video game than a movie.

Thank you very much for the spoilers.

Let's see. April 1945. German military was not the same beast it was in 1940, probably back to 1940 Russian standards because of losses in cadre. SS Battalion probably should have been Volksgrenadiers, half trained. That leg battalion was probably right for the scene at the crossroads. A veteran battalion would hav bipassed the roadblock and moved on leaving a team with a couple of panzerfausts to deal with the immobile Easy Eight. So these guys could sing pretty well. So what. They were idiots, except they were a lot of idiots.

The best stories involve sacrifice and loss. A tank battalion smashing a German leg battalion bled down to 300 guys, not such an intesting story. Then you'd have east front.

Hey, I liked watching Wardaddy get a shave and an egg.

Haven't seen the movie, but I rather suspect that from the point of view of the 'reality of peace' war itself is quite ridiculous…

Since there are already spoilers galore in this post…

The Shermans were not "operating alone". They were attached to an infantry battalion whose commander ordered them to proceed to a crossroads and hold it until his infantry could come up. The position needed to be secured and the tanks were the fastest way to do that.

Most of the conduct of the SS battalion can be explained by inexperience. Untrained men will stick close to their commanders and lines of communication.

The other common complaints (tanks too close together, etc.) are the result of storytelling; they need to tell a story visually, and proper tactics do not lend themselves well to being seen and telling a coherent story.

Overall, I liked the film a lot.

It's a good movie.

Most of the complaints I've heard against it are of the "the Germans were the best ever and would never do anything less than perfectly, they had the best tanks and all their soldiers were supermen and they should never lose. This movie is crap because my weird obsession with the mythical superiority of Nazi Germany was not reinforced." variety.

Yeah, which side won the dang war, anyway? 8)=

Maybe because it was the end of the war and it was a bunch of inexperienced troops hastily given weapons and the SS title. There are plenty of stories of Germans in the later part of the war doing things gamers insist no sane soldier would do.

The SS Panzer troops were often first rate fighters. A lot of the other SS infantry units were nothing more than thugs who, while fanatical, were not very good fighters. This did become more apparent toward the end of the war when the Germans started running out of men.

'but I refuse to believe that many American soldiers would stand by and murder an enemy soldier in cold blood.'

That's called 'short memory' or 'not knowing your history'.

Most famous example? My Lai

link

And here we go again … anyway … Yes, My Lai and the few other war crimes commited in Vietnam by the US are very few and very far between. And were not sanctioned by the Gov't or Higher HQ. As opposed to how and what the VC and NVA commited as "doctrine". We studied My Lai, and other incidents[The JAG showed parts of the movie "Breaker Morant" etc.], at the Inf Officer Adv Course. To make clear, what not to do, how to avoid situations, etc., etc., etc. … And regardless very, very, very, few war crimes have been committed by the US Military in any conflict. But now I'm sure someone will disputed this and then there will be posts back and forth saying who, what, when, why, how, etc., etc. … Sighting US, UK, German, Russian, Japanese, Turk, etc., etc. incidents of the past … So please spare me/us this conversation we have had some many, many times here previously. And yes, war is bad, war sucks, war is messy, etc., etc. . I think most of us here know that either thru study or unfortunately by experience …

Legion4 said it better than I did.
The reason such things are news is that they rarely happen.

What Legion 4 said. As to the OP, yep, it is a great movie.

Well filmed, great cast, good history, accurate equipment and a good story.

As to whether the 'men against great odds' is believable or not, I might point out the Battle of Samar, Thermopylae, Bastogne etc. as actual examples of such events.

Thanks,

Pat

Overall I liked it. But call me naive or an idealist, but I refuse to believe that many American soldiers would stand by and murder an enemy soldier in cold blood.
The SS guy I understand, but not the first one.

I strayed onto a German site a few weeks ago, they claimed that US soldiers were responsible for the murder of some 100,000+ German POW's. All this was swept under the rug at Nuremberg and made into an absolute unassailable fact by stating "the victors always rewrite history."

I was entertained by the movie, and at very surprised that they went so far as to put the logs on the side of the Shermans. However, it would be nice to get a good war movie that didn't stick to "the formula". Soooo tired of the predictability.

Fury did a decent job of showing what war does to people. People become hardened and calused and do things they would never consider in peacetime. Its a credit to the actors that got this point accross without beating us over the head. It has less flag waiving then Saving Private Ryan which may bother some.

The killing of prisoners esp late in the war is well documented for both sides. US troops were inflamed when Germans shot at the lead vehicle inflicted a few losses then sought to surrender. Malmedy enraged many US units who opening admitted they stopped taking prisoners. Black tanker outfits were often mistaken for SS uniforms with harsh consequences. Fortunately both armies had enough law abiding elements to keep it under control (it never reached the levels of the Eastern front). When Patton found out about an execution of prisoners in Sicily he made sure it was kept out of the press but did discipline the offenders. Guderian managed to persuade Hitler to not execute all western prisoners late in the war (Hitler reasoning was that by doing so allied troops would also stop taking prisoners forcing German soldiers to fight to the death.)

The movie did a decent job with combat though of course late war US troops would have used lavish artillery to overcome German resistence not frontal attack.

The final battle was over the top. This has nothing to do with Paul Carrel fantasy Germans. If someone made a movie about the Kasserine pass and included a scence of Germans mowing down green Americans like this, the point would be the same – self preservation stops even green troops from doing charges into machine guns.

Previously German combat efficency was over stated by gamers now the reverse is true in a post Citizen Soldiers era.

As an example someone cited Bastonge as an example of hundreds of Germans defeated by 5 US troops. The actual force ratios at Bastogne were about 30K Germans v. 20K US. Not suprsingly a reinforced VG divison (the 26th) did not overrun an elite US airborne division supported by a CC of the 10th armored.

This in no way should lessen the achievement of the US Army in WWII. Right up to the end the Germans put effective well equiped units into the field – often with unpromising material. Yet we overcame them by dint of hard fighting and rapid learning. Had the US Army faced troops as stupid as the 300 SS shown, victory in WWII we could hardly be taken serioulsy given the disparity in numbers and resources.

Instead we recognize it as a great victory over a very tough opponent. And we also recognize the terrible human cost to both those who didn't come back and those who did.

Again Fury is worth seeing. Looks great and has a bit to say about men in battle.

TomT

What's sobering about the current crop of war movies (SPR and after) is that the horror and brutality of war are brought home to a greater extent than ever before in the relatively bloodless movies of the past. When you see .50-cal rounds taking the top half of a guy's head off, the expression "war is hell" takes on a whole new meaning.

I had no problem with the 'fool's charge' at the end. The movie wanted to make Hollywood heroes out of Brad Pitt and his crew and few things will do that as effectively as a last stand. Even SPR had one. Overcoming great odds is the bread-and-butter of epic war movies. Had 'Fury' been made more realistically with the WWII buff or wargamer in mind, it wouldn't have made $23.5 USD million at the box office this weekend. Certain compromises had to be made to give the movie more mainstream appeal:

link

28mm Fanatik

Good link. I think that review sums up the movie well as I saw it. Worth seeing at the theater with a group of guy friends, just don't bring the wife or girlfriend. Interesting to see what the movie will gross in the end. Will determine if we will see more of the same.

My wife thought it was a good movie too (the deal is, if I go to her chick flicks, she has to see my war movies).

This reply is for Korvessa who questioned if American Soldiers would stand by and murder an enemy soldier----My answer is war can make killers of us all. About twenty years ago, I knew a fellow, whose dad was an armored infantryman serving in Italy. While taking with this fellow's father, he told me his story about how he had just gotten world that his brother was k.i.a. in Normandy. At that point, he took a German p.o.w., put his 45 in this prisoner's mouth and blew his brains out. Later, he found out that his brother was badly wounded, but did survive. The way this was told to me, I have no doubt that it was 100% true.
Also, if you read the official U.S. Army history book on the Battle of the Bulge, by Cole----he mentions that there were official orders, at least at regimental level allowing U.S. troops to not take German S.S. or Paratroops prisoner.
Also, I met a fellow would during W.W.II served on Iwo Jima as a Navy forward fire observer (attached to the U.S.M.C.). He had told me that Jap troops often did try to surrender, but were shot down instead. I had not reason to doubt him or his story either!
Sincerely,
Tom Semian
Avalon, Pa. 15202

My answer is war can make killers of us all.

Yes, I know, I served over a decade in my distant youth as an Infantry Officer in 4 Inf Bns. As an Infantryman killing the enemy is your job … But to repeat myself … And here we go again … anyway … Yes, My Lai and the few other war crimes commited in Vietnam by the US are very few and very far between. And were not sanctioned by the Gov't or Higher HQ. As opposed to how and what the VC and NVA commited as "doctrine". We studied My Lai, and other incidents[The JAG showed parts of the movie "Breaker Morant" etc.], at the Inf Officer Adv Course. To make clear, what not to do, how to avoid situations, etc., etc., etc. … And regardless very, very, very, few war crimes have been committed by the US Military in any conflict. But now I'm sure someone will disputed this and then there will be posts back and forth saying who, what, when, why, how, etc., etc. … Sighting US, UK, German, Russian, Japanese, Turk, etc., etc. incidents of the past … So please spare me/us this conversation we have had some many, many times here previously. And yes, war is bad, war sucks, war is messy, etc., etc. . I think most of us here know that either thru study or unfortunately by experience …

I just saw this movie about five hours ago and was a bit disappointed for numerous reasons. I would rate it as a solid 'B'. The props (tanks, uniforms, etc.) seemed very accurate. However, the movie just wasn't near to what I was hoping that it would be.
TomS.

If Hollywood can not make money on a war film, they won't make them. I will put up with some of the formulaic crap just to enjoy watching a war movie in the theatre.

Hopefully, I will get to see Fury this weekend.

I enjoyed the gritty-ness of the movie, however there were some things that just did not add up to me.

The Shermans engaging the Tiger I and two were armed with the M1 76mm gun (and the "fury" tank is armed with the later version of that gun) which is fully capable of destroying a Tiger 1 at that range yet they are trying to get to the rear??? (a Tiger II on the other hand would be a very different thing).

The SS marching down the road and singing in Germany April, 1945, guess they were happy they were engaging the U.S. and not the Russians?

The end Battle against a disabled Sherman and just running into the front where all of the fire power is located (many blind spots on a tank) and the Panzerfaust just not doing the job – got to love Hollywood.

Just some of the things that made me go "Hmmmmm" but over all I enjoyed the movie.

Yeah, as fanatical as the Waffen SS could be, it is hard to imagine them in such high spirits as to be singing while marching, especially into a tactical situation. That one took me out of the moment, to be honest.

That and none of the actors were actually singing, or even talking, that I could see, which made it even harder for me.

Don't get me wrong, overall I liked the movie quite a bit, and thought it was a much better movie than SPR. But it is hard to get over a few things for me the older I get, especially as a rivet counting tread-head. That said, this time the tread-head in me could not have been happier. =)

"Yeah, as fanatical as the Waffen SS could be, it is hard to imagine them in such high spirits as to be singing while marching, especially into a tactical situation."

I was kind of surprised as well, but this is a movie and a pretty good one. I might refer to it as the tank version of SPR. These guys made an effort on those vehicles. WOW!

OK, back to the SS marching happy boys…my thought was, "You'll get some real soon."

In fact, the 76mm gun's performance was very disappointing against the Tiger until HVAP was made available. I know it was around int he Fall of 1944 but I don't know in what amounts throughout the war.

At that range, an M1 76mm gun can compromise the frontal armor of a Tiger IE – can penetrate at 1km – and they were closer than that. Remember also this is April, 1945 so HVAP was around and that would penetrate no problem.

also when the Panzerfaust penetrated the turret and hit the one tanker (would have blew through him), If the panzerfaust penetrated a tank it was pretty business over as the molten copper shot all around the tank :)

But still I did enjoy the movie.

I posted a blog article today about the real star of the movie, the Sherman tank:

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Patrick R – I seem to recall seeing a book in a bookshop a few years ago that claimed that a few million German POWs were deliberately terminated after the war by the western allies – mostly through starvation and neglect while being held behind barbed wire in open fields exposed to the elements.

Visually, the movie was excellent. The sound design was also some of the best I've heard in a theater. The shells whizzing and pinging by was crazy. The artillery felt real. See it in a theater with a good sound system, and you'll thank me.

That said, the Hollywood injection was a bit too much to prevent me suspending my disbelief. The infantry tactics were terrible – full squads of men advancing completely upright while aimlessly firing from their hips, all the while being shot at. The casual stroll through the German village halfway through the movie was also pretty bad. There was no sense of immediate danger. No grabbing cover, no self-preservation instincts, just American GIs walking as if they'd already cleared out the enemy. The finale was a bit too over the top as well. Direct frontal assaults by the Germans, no falling back and outmaneuvering or bypassing Fury altogether. It just wasn't a believable story.

SPR at least had a bit more believable infantry engagements, despite the MG nest fiasco.

The setting, costumes, and effects were the only saving grace for an otherwise boring story. But, I never expected this to be a movie I'd watch for the story. I came for some tank-on tank action, and was not disappointed.

~iPaint

I enjoyed it very much.

As to moral considerations, I think most viewers will take away that 'war is hell" and does wicked things to people caught in it;

and that self-sacrifice is noble. "Send me."

I really liked it and thought it was the best thing Brad Pitt had done in years. There was a wealth of detail for the rivet counter to revel in. I liked the little things like Brad holding the whip antenna down while passing underneath a telephone line, or pulling out the cotter pin on a chain that secured the .50 in place before going into battle. Little things like that made the movie for me.

Sure, the Germans used up a whole box of panzerfausts and couldn't get a hit, but then again it wasn't a very accurate weapon to begin with, had a short range and the machine guns on the tank would have kept them a little farther than arm's length. Everything in the film had to be compressed to keep it all in view on the screen. That was why the three Shermans kept so close to each other; the director probably knew they would have spread out to present a more difficult target, but he wanted to fit them all into the same shot.

If anyone doubts the plausibility (however remote) of the ending, remember the battle in which Audie Murphy won his Congressional Medal of Honor.

"I seem to recall seeing a book in a bookshop a few years ago that claimed that a few million German POWs were deliberately terminated after the war by the western allies – mostly through starvation and neglect while being held behind barbed wire in open fields exposed to the elements."

You can read a lot of crap in books, doesn't mean it's true.