(11-01-2014, 05:51 AM)Ivan The Big Wrote: Can't say it will be in my top 5 with the likes of Cross of Iron, Band of Brothers series, Das Boat and Gettysburg but a good flick for tank lovers.
Just got back home from seeing the movie, and this ItB quote seemed to be a good way to start my little review. And here is the first of spoilers: that is how I will rate this movie in the end too.
As I wrote earlier, TCM decided to air Kelly's Heroes yesterday. I love the movie to bits, I've seen parts of it like a dozen times, but 'only' watched the whole movie like four or five times. So knowing I was going to see Fury today, I prepared the pop corn, opened up a cold bevvy, and watched it again. A gig behind the enemy lines, a tank platoon on a move, Tigers to be fought, and some war weary GIs making it all personal this time.
You better deliver Fury, was what I was thinking having really enjoyed the old classic again.
And boy does Fury deliver 
It opens up with a sort of a dream sequence...
...but after that it hits its tracks rather quickly (see what I did there?). Returning from their latest battle to rear, they receive their replacement man in form of Logan Lerman playing the part of young Norman Ellison. Trained as a typist(!), he's shown to fill in with Wardaddy's (Pitt) crew instead, and it is mostly with him we relate to madness of it all.
Brad Pitt looks a bit old to his role but delivers for most part, Shia LeBeouf is actually so good you don't even realise it is him for the most part, but having a new face (at least to me) playing the young protagonist worked out really well. The early scene where he is forced to shoot the surrendered POW wearing a GI coat is a good fit to overall story.
You can't help but notice how battle hardened and cynical everyone else is made to look like. Quite a contrast, but then, as the movie rolls on its tracks, you begin to see why they are what they are. And as the movie end some 2 hrs later, that's a couple of days only in real time, you can't but feel that young Ellison has seen so much so soon.
I can't but applaud his role in the movie. You sort of learn to know the rest of the tank crew well too, but nothing like with do with Norman Ellisons character.
The action in this movie is first class for most parts. I am more than happy to forgive the few areas where some compromises were made, mostly for reason to fit everything into screen methinks. So for an example when Wardaddy's platoon was ordered to relieve a pinned down platoon, the way the tanks crossed the opening close to each other can be explained with that. So forget details like that, just enjoy the view, the sounds, the ride! The whole movie theater shook with the shock of explosions, at times it feels you are really in the thick of the action, ducking down from tracers.
As the story progresses, you begin to understand and approve the crews cynical approach. Fanatical resistance pops out often and unexpected, determined enemy soldiers, but young boys and girls armed to their teeth and extremely dangerous here and there too.
When they finally have a decent night's rest that sequence feels right in the movie as well. A bit of decency in between the mad fighting for them. And then it kicks off again, sooner than anyone realises they (and we as the audience) are in the thick of it.
And then the Tiger cometh!
The duel with the Tiger was pure first class action, I am not sure I remembered to breathe once before it was over. And not only for the reason we get to enjoy a real Tiger, first time ever in a movie? Boy do they make it quite a monster for sure. Never mind the tactics shown, the 76mm would have made a better job, instead again just enjoy the ride. Some of the Shermans in Wardaddy's platoon actually had the short 75mms so the tactics here seem to be spot on to me, again, if you just want to see them so.
And when they finally nail the Tiger, leaving it smoking with two smoldering entry holes in its big fat behind, you are sort of screaming: third round, put a third round through it!
They won't, so there's another spoiler for you
And then, in a bit, we are soon approaching the final battle. The Hollywood battle.
I am very much enjoying the movie, so I am thinking
maybe it is not that bad after all.
They build towards the finale very nicely, we know in their flank there's a German unit somewhere there, of unknown size and composition. So someone has to investigate. And as we get to see from the first peek too: it is SS allright.
Clean camouflage, parade marching through the country side, armed to teeth, MG-42s, quite a few men with panzerfaust happily carried on their shoulders, singing along. Young Norman reported to Wardaddy there's 200-300 of them, and Wardaddy makes the conclusion there's a full SS Battalion heading their way.
But what is in the screen was more like two or three platoons from what I saw and recall, so this particular SS Battalion was worn down to a Coy size max perhaps. Young recruits, obviously fresh out from a quickest of training? Young Norman just got their number wrong. See: using some
positive waves, we can imagine an angle to make it come good rather than awful?
Oh but it is bad. It is downright awful.
I won't spoil the finale here in any more detail, but the movie would have been better without the finale there at all. Just commit the men deciding to defend the crossroads, and leave it there. It is that silly.
Or, if we'd rather seen perhaps something similar as from the opening scene of Enemy at the Gates: hapless young boys and old men driven to slaughter this time with ruthless SS Polizei officers gunning down anyone backing. It would have been a good fit to what we've seen earlier.
But unfortunately no. They are supposed to be real war hardened soldiers, yet a company of them can't destroy a surrounded, buttoned up, disabled tank for the life of them. And it spoils the end of the movie quite effectively. Then there are the end credits, and then there is the feeling: What a pity.
Regardless,
3.5 out of 5 stars from me, and a definite recommendation to check out the movie. It is a must
It is a shame though, this could have easily been a rare 5 star movie even.
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