So, I would first like to say that I have no real world combat experience myself. However, I have studied the history and combat scenarios, including tank battles, of WWII that really did happen, as well as the specifications of the vehicles in question. I think it's safe for me to say that I know what I'm talking about, but if you disagree or want to discuss something further, please just say so.
Now that I have that out of the way, let's talk about Fury. This movie had incredible sound design, a lackluster story, acting that was rather poor by just about everybody involved, and like almost every WWII film, American propaganda. Setting all of that aside however, I want to focus on this one scene that I thought started off strong and then just sort of ruined the rest of the experience for me. This is a very exciting scene and one that people have wanted to see for a long time. This is the scene in question. Here we see a Sherman tank go head to head with a German Tiger I.
The Tiger is able to engage targets from a much greater distance than the U.S. Sherman and it has the advantage of having much stronger armor in addition to it's more powerful main gun. By their own admission, the people involved in the making of this film even say that a Sherman stands little chance against a Tiger on it's own. Yet, here we see just that. More specifically, we see the Tiger fire a direct hit into the side of the Sherman, which is a weak spot on the machine, and it just bounces off and the effect is an oil spill in the turret. Hmm. It's very unlike this would happen, but okay, I can roll with that. Then we see a second direct hit from the Tiger and it just bounces off again.
This is where I start shaking my head and telling Hollywood to **** off. Mind you, all the other Sherman tanks in the column go down with one shot, which is realistic. But Brad Pitt's tank survives two direct shots from an 88mm main gun. This is the equivalent of plot armor in a video game. In a real world scenario, the Tiger commander would not order his driver to move forward to close the distance between Pitt's tank and their own. The reason for this is because it would allow the Sherman to engage, but would otherwise be out of range unlike the Tiger that can engage and destroy (as proven by the earlier tanks going up in flames and Pitt's tank not being able to return fire) from a greater distance.
So, what was a promising scene that actually included a real Tiger I, and in fact, is the only one still in operation today, turned out to be another Hollywood blunder that spoils the entire movie. It's not like the rest of the movie was much better though, and the ending was really stupid and made little sense in the context of the war being almost over with Germany losing. The ending in this movie was straight up "**** yeah, America!" combined with "American soldiers die, now feel bad" propaganda that was so obvious, Joseph Goebbels would be turning in his grave if he still had one.
Overall, this had the potential to be a great film that focused on a single tank crew during late WWII and the experiences they had during that time. As someone who was enthusiastic going into the film, and as someone who knows a thing or two about the subject matter that the film attempts to cover, I was sorely disappointed that it was yet just another Hollywood interpretation of WWII. To see so much detail go into the visuals and sound design to make it look and sound authentic, and then fail on every other front, is just so bizarre to say the least.
Retour en haut
