Fury

Atticus Finch said:

It kinda reminded me of an early sixties zombie movie where millions of zombies would flail themselves nightly against some poor mortal's wood-framed house...and end up never getting to eat the mortal.

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Or Zulu!

I believe there was something in Clausewitz about never giving your enemy the battle they want.

They must have been zombies or they would have made up a gasoline bomb or used several of those Panzerfausts (or whatever RPG-ish hardware) they were seen marching in with. If it was me, I'd have just marched around that one nearly out of action tank.

Monsoon said:

How many Germans did Audie Murphy mow down standing on the back of that M-10? Dude was on the back of it firing a .50 for an hour before running out of ammo.

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"Audie Murphy earned his Medal of Honor during the Battle of the Colmar Pocket near Holtzwihr, France. During this battle, he climbed aboard a burning M10 "Wolverine" Tank Destroyer which was abandoned in a nearby ditch and began firing a .50 caliber machine gun at the enemy. He killed an estimated 50 German foot soldiers and turned back 6 Panzer tanks. As Audie fought this lone battle, the M10 he was on sustained an estimated three direct hits from either enemy tanks or artillery. Later, during the filming of TO HELL AND BACK, Audie Murphy, who wanted the movie to be accurate, became unhappy when there were no M10's available during the film's production. He reluctantly settled for a Sherman tank during the filming of the famous battle."

My Grandfather, who was in his late 40s and had seven kids got his selective service notice in 1945. He used it against the kids when they acted up, saying, "you'll miss me when I've gone to the Army!"

Stearmen said:

"Audie Murphy earned his Medal of Honor during the Battle of the Colmar Pocket near Holtzwihr, France. During this battle, he climbed aboard a burning M10 "Wolverine" Tank Destroyer which was abandoned in a nearby ditch and began firing a .50 caliber machine gun at the enemy. He killed an estimated 50 German foot soldiers and turned back 6 Panzer tanks. As Audie fought this lone battle, the M10 he was on sustained an estimated three direct hits from either enemy tanks or artillery. Later, during the filming of TO HELL AND BACK, Audie Murphy, who wanted the movie to be accurate, became unhappy when there were no M10's available during the film's production. He reluctantly settled for a Sherman tank during the filming of the famous battle."

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Exactly. A bad ass.

There was an infantryman in Korea that did pretty much the same thing, too.

So, the story of one tank holding off a bunch of enemy troops isn't too far fetched.

Monsoon said:

So, the story of one tank holding off a bunch of enemy troops isn't too far fetched.

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It wasn't a bad movie at all and that final scene is satisfying on an emotional level, the most important level, but it's sure not Saving Private Ryan or any of the greats

The primary issue is that neither party needed to engage the other at that site. The film makers needed to create something better to force the issue but didn't have the time, money or realization they had a problem. Our Americans had plenty of guns and ammo and could have performed a harassing guerrilla action or a more intelligent ambush with some or most of them outside the tank and able to maneuver. But even the logical part of me wouldn't want that, you want your heroes to be together! However, the situation is actually MORE logical for the American characters than for the Germans. They may make the unnecessarily suicidal and probably less tactically effective choice to button themselves up in an inoperative tank but, if memory serves, they were told to hold that area ... the Germans just needed to get through it and fighting a time-wasting and suicidal battle goes against their motivation to get where they are going and inflict damage that matters.

If some higher power had made me studio executive for a day (I shudder at the thought but bear with me), I'd have removed the buildings and other "cover," thus making the tank the only ambush point. I'd have established that the Germans had vehicles that couldn't make it across the muddy fields and I'd have nixed those damn Panzerfaust/RPG thingys. I probably would have tried to speed up the time frame so neither side had quite as much time to think (or speachify) and I'd have probably have wounded one of the Americans so he couldn't leave the tank.

I suspect (I hope) that this scene ended up being all emotion and little logic because the film makers got stuck with not enough time or the wrong location or something. That old saw, "no plan of battle ever survives contact with the enemy" is true in film making too. They might have painted themselves into a corner where they had no time to establish much in the way of strategy on the part of the Germans ... I thought I noticed some repeated shots of the German troops marching in, now directors HATE repeated shots ... so it's usually an indication that things are not going as planned. The whole ending might have been made up or modified late in the production. There's a bunch of strange stuff that happens at that point ... the first highly convenient thing being that a mine blows the track off the tank but no one seems to be worried about the fact that there might be another one anywhere. The mine is just there to strand the tank ... maybe there should have been more, that way they could have been stuck in the tank.

Films are often more improvised than we'd like to think and, frighteningly and foolishly, often go into production (these days) without completely buttoned up scripts.

All that said, David Ayer has shown a propensity to go for highly emotional, highly violent endings to other films he's worked on. I love emotion but I love logic too. I'm just a bigger fan of emotion in the context of logic.

the film startet in german cinemas at the beginning of January (seems that still europe is too far from holywood) and driven by the comments here in the Forum and at some other spots i gave it a go and watched it

i#ve never seen such a high Level of authenticity of the Equipment in a WW2 movie before especially in US uniforms- Brad Pitt wears the early pattern tanker jacket with the patch pockets - the cavalry boots, his Driver (don't remember the Name) wears a cut down duckhunter camo combat jacket which was issued within the 2nd armoured only - along with more realistic uniform combinations and almost unknown uniform items

as for the "rolling material" they didn't only use period american stuff but the german items 'n vehicles looked also period to me (yeah i know the german halftracks are the czech postwar variants with the closed top)

anyway - due to the fact that i mostly watch movies just to be entertained and i'm not an Analyst who discuss the pro's 'n con's of a movie down to Zero i was pretty impressed

will get a copy as soon as they are available here in Europe

I can't comment on the situation in the US Army during WW2, but I do know that many British soldiers found themselves serving in unlikely units. One infantry officer told me that he had two men in his company who wore pilot's wings - they were RAF men who'd been grounded and got themselves transferred into the infantry. The 5th Kings Regiment (who were the furthest advanced unit of the British Army at war's end) included, among others: at least two ex Royal Marines including one who had crewed landing craft on D-Day; two artillerymen, including an ex artillery spotter who ended up leading an infantry platoon; at least two infantrymen who'd been medically downgraded and should only have been serving in a rear unit - one of whom was a platoon commander. They were joined by lots of raw recruits straight out of training. And those were just the ones that I have met. Elsewhere there were near mutinies when RAF and Royal Marines were transferred to the infantry.
By contrast, Joe Ekins - the tank gunner who is often credited with knocking out Michael Wittmann's tank - never fired another shot after that battle. Instead he was sent to another tank and became a wireless operator.
So, yes, the Brits certainly mixed their personnel up all over the place.

I recently caught "The Tanks of Fury" on the Smithsonian Channel a while back. It features some WWII tanker vets discussing the realism of the movie, and life in a Sherman, i n general. Great piece of work.

It's being rebroadcast on 31 Jan 31, and 01 and 02 Feb.

http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/shows/tanks-of-fury/0/3415077

I highly recommend catching it.

My understanding is that the Smnithsonian program will be an extra feature on the DVD.
By the way, the DVD comes out tomorrow in the US...

Well, NO bonus features on the DVD; they're all on the blu-ray.
Figures...

They're trying to fade out Blu Ray. Sad, especially because there's currently few computers that play Blu Ray.

Bushman said:

They're trying to fade out Blu Ray. Sad, especially because there's currently few computers that play Blu Ray.

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Interesting, I had never heard that.
So why do all the best bonus features seem to make it only onto blu-ray these days?

I was in a hotel recently and "Fury" was on the in-room movie menu. But the price BEFORE taxes was $17.99. Wasn't sure I wanted to gamble that much on a movie, so didn't watch it. Think I missed a bargain?

p51 said:

Well, NO bonus features on the DVD; they're all on the blu-ray.
Figures...

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Worth knowing! I like BD, though I have some discs I can't play with my current tv as it has no way of redirecting the 5.1 sound to 2.0 (older design, early 2000s, designed as a bedroom portable). I'll be buying a big one soon though.... 5.1sound and a 50" screen will be great for films.

Really hope they don't phase out physical disks; I loathe the idea of being forced to buy download only, or -worse- only being able to access stuff on subscription. When I rule the world, whomever invented Spotify will find their head on a stick!

Edward said:

Really hope they don't phase out physical disks; I loathe the idea of being forced to buy download only, or -worse- only being able to access stuff on subscription. When I rule the world, whomever invented Spotify will find their head on a stick!

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You said it, brother! Subscriptions like that just establish a continuous umbilical cord of cash flow from the user to the service provider. Whereas, if I buy the DVD, I can play it anytime I want for the rest of its useful life and never pay another pence more.

hatguy1 said:

You said it, brother! Subscriptions like that just establish a continuous umbilical cord of cash flow from the user to the service provider. Whereas, if I buy the DVD, I can play it anytime I want for the rest of its useful life and never pay another pence more.

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AMEN!
I simply don't get people who say that hard data storage on a personal level is dead in that, "it's all online" anyway. That's so untrue I don't know where to start.
'On demand' content changes all the time. Your DVR can fry itself at any moment and you've then lost all that content. Services like Netflix are constantly changing what is and is not available online to viewing.
And then what happens if your internet connection goes down? You can't watch anything until it's back up.
And what about movies you only want to see a certain part? Every try to fast-forward an hour into a Netflix download? It'd take several minutes to get to a spot that you can get to on DVD in seconds if you know where it is.
For example, I wanted to see a specific item in a movie once to see how it was marked. I had the DVD and slow-motioned the pause function and get everything I needed. No way could you do that online, as most services don't even allow that option to freeze-frame in the exact spot you want. But on a DVD, it's easy.
If it's a movie I'll watch with any freuqency (or one I want to see just certain parts), a DVD or Blu-Ray is really the best way to go, no question.

I like to think of myself as old school; maybe it's just part of my hoarding issue that I have to have the physical artefact... somtimes more than once... (I boy collect, rather than girl collect, to put it one way..... was it Nick Hornby who came up with that distinction?). I suppose kids who've grown up with everything online don't feel the same need for the physical. The other thing is that this drift to subscription everything and access-not-ownership is driven by the entertainment industry, an industry which continues to thrive by screwing over the creatives who actually produce their product in the first place. It's one industry where nobody does as well as the middleman.... Spotify in particular are notorious for paying very poorly in terms of royalties to artists whose work they include in their service, and in particular they treat artists on independent labels worse then they do those on the majors.

Bushman said:

They're trying to fade out Blu Ray. Sad, especially because there's currently few computers that play Blu Ray.

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I suspect Bushman meant they're trying to fade out DVD, as most computers can play DVD but not Bluray.

MisterCairo said:

I suspect Bushman meant they're trying to fade out DVD, as most computers can play DVD but not Bluray.

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LOL, yes. lol A few days ago, I noticed that I accidentally wrote in "blu-ray", but I was unable to edit my post.

Bushman said:

LOL, yes. lol A few days ago, I noticed that I accidentally wrote in "blu-ray", but I was unable to edit my post.

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Shows you how little I know about DVDs, I thought that "blue-ray" was the correct spelling!