Brad Pitt's WWII Tank movie, "FURY"

[Stearmen]

Also, for an added bonus, watch for Shea Labeouf's missing and magically reappearing tooth.

Now that sounds like a drinking game if I ever heard of one!

 

[rjb1]

I don't know if he really did it, but I saw him on a talk show and he said he had a good healthy tooth removed for the role.
Actually, I hope he wasn't that stupid.

 

[Stearmen]

I don't know if he really did it, but I saw him on a talk show and he said he had a good healthy tooth removed for the role.
Actually, I hope he wasn't that stupid.

He seems to have some big psychological issues in real life!

 

[vintage68]

Saw it yesterday and enjoyed it. Thought there was some great acting by everyone.

 

[vintage68]

He seems to have some big psychological issues in real life!

He does not seem to be handling fame well. I sure wouldn't want to be famous. No thanks!

 

[BriarWolf]

Having just returned from the cinema I felt the need to pop in on this thread and offer my thoughts.

This film...was superb. I do not give praise like that lightly. It was very well executed; well shot, good score, technical detail was accurate down to the last rivet as best I could tell, and the cast was strong with good chemistry executing a good script. The film is utterly raw, without being hamfisted about it; it lays a horrid canvas before you without shame or consolation. There is no cartoon villainy from perfidious Nazis being conquered by the righteous heroes of the Greatest Generation. The film does not dehumanise anyone; rather it focuses on how war dehumanises people. The film is, in so many ways really, a portrait of post-traumatic stress. It focuses on war, and World War II specifically, in a way rarely confronted in American cinema; the film is part war-tale, part psychological horror story. See it. It stands on par with Saving Private Ryan and in some ways I think almost surpasses it.

 

[Ghostsoldier]

See it. It stands on par with Saving Private Ryan and in some ways I think almost surpasses it.

Agreed...this is the SPR of the 21st Century (so far, IMHO)....I'm going to see it again this weekend with my 2 sons, on a larger screen with better sound (than my circa 1940 hometown theater).

Rob

 

[Monsoon]

I am reminded of an interview on History Channel or Frontline with an American tank commander from the first Iraq war. His tank squadron was sent out across the desert at night to find an Iraqi tank group. The were hauling ass across the darkened desert in their M1 Abrams tanks looking for the Iraqis, watching ahead with nightvision devices, over sand dune after sand dune. He said they were screaming across the desert at full throttle and crested a dune and there they were, a bunch of Iraqi tanks. He said he didn't even get the word to "Fire!" out of his mouth when all the M1 Abrams opened up full blast on the Iraqis, boom, boom, boom boom! Contact and direct fire were instantaneous. He said within seconds the Iraqi group was reduced to rubble without ever knowing what hit them. Cool!

Sounds like the Battle of 73 Easting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/73_easting

 

[MikeKardec]

Just saw the film and liked some of it and didn't like some of it. I very much liked the battle with the Tiger which was quite well done, though I thought that there was a bit too much of having the actors say what they were doing ... useless in my experience, the audience either gets it visually or they don't. It's possible it was requested by a studio exec or producer who didn't have confidence in the experience but it can slow down a sequence to the point where it actually HAS to be used because it gets in the way of cause and effect. An ATROCIOUS example of this is Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor. It felt like half the dialog was redundant to the action!

I loved the tension in the scene with the German girls and found myself deeply empathetic to their desperate need to understand what was happening between the Americans. An interesting and protracted scene with an almost Tarentino-esque sense of ebb and flow. In some ways as suspenseful as the Tiger battle.

Spoilers, be warned ...

The biggest problem I had and the only problem that mattered much was what I took to be deeply flawed tactics in the final battle. 1st) aren't they worried about other mines? 2nd) As far as I know (Dad was in the Tank Destroyers stateside before he was deployed in a QMTC in 1944), tankers do NOT like enemy soldiers getting close to their tanks, ie. under their guns. I'd assume that after the first 5 minutes of a battle like the one shown, the Germans would be hunkered down making gasoline bombs and then crawling through the tanks many blind areas and using them to cook the Americans out. Either that or simply going around the one tank that is in their way ... the film's pervasive mud could have been used to partly excuse that one providing the Germans had a fair number of trucks that could get mired in the fields. The road could have been the only way to advance. 3d) Unfortunately (probably for me only) the first thing I did in my head when I realized they were going to need to fight was to dismount the machine guns and set up a Y shaped ambush. Two guys stay in the tank to use the gun to keep the distant German vehicles from retreating while the others fought from positions where they could maneuver or at least retreat ... I'd have abandoned that damn oven of a tank as soon as the main gun ran out of vehicles to shoot at.

I may have spent too much time playing cowboys and Indians as a kid but I did learn the value of retreat and that every retreat should be an ambush.

Anyway, I was slightly pushed out of the experience because the climactic battle wasn't designed to do what they obviously wanted to do as well as it could have been ... meaning to keep the guys together in the tank with the tank being nearly a character or a prat of their team. If one of them was wounded it might have solved some of these problems ... it's even somewhat likely that a production issue like having to cut other scenes might have painted the film makers into a corner where this was the only way out. I've been there a time or two.

I think the greatest turn on for a one time film maker like me is to see a really good film (like this one) that still has a few problems. You enjoy the movie, your brain goes into overdrive trying to figure out what could have been done better and emotionally and intellectually you have a great time. Highly recommended except for the tactics!

 

[DavidJones]

Went and seen it Friday night. I liked the movie very much, the filming and staging was very well done and realistic. I really enjoyed seeing that Tiger tank in action. The only problem I had with the movie was the end battle scene which was not very realistic in my opinion. Highly recommended.

 

[MikeKardec]

It is interesting that it took nearly 50 years before some actual WWII hardware started being used in WWII films. When it comes to the accuracy of costumes and props and vehicles, films made in the last 20 years seem to do a better job of it. I suspect that this is a budget issue, a good deal more money is being spent these days and in the last 20 years or so less of it, proportionally, has been spent on stars. I love seeing a real Tiger or what could easily pass for one.

 

[Ghostsoldier]

Speaking of replica 1:1 Tigers, this one is almost spot-on, made for the 2014 Russian film White Tiger....it runs rings around the disguised T-55's of SPR and those monstrosities in Kelly's Heroes:

[video=youtube;Wlv6iuLT6-s]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wlv6iuLT6-s[/video]

I haven't seen the movie, but I understand they ended up not using it, in the end and after all that work...they used some godawful ugly behemoth that doesn't even look like a period tank...go figure. :eusa_doh:

Rob

 

[rjb1]

Two older films that had realistic uniforms, hardware, and weapons were "Battleground" and "The Longest Day". Both were a lot better than later movies such as "Patton" which were pretty terrible when it comes to authenticity, especially armor.

 

[Worf]

Well they certainly weren't hard to hear coming....

Worf

 

[Greyryder]

Two older films that had realistic uniforms, hardware, and weapons were "Battleground" and "The Longest Day". Both were a lot better than later movies such as "Patton" which were pretty terrible when it comes to authenticity, especially armor.

Was Patton the on that was using post war US armor for axis tanks? Somewhere, I ran across production stills of a movie that was using M48 or M60 tanks for WWII panzers, and I keep thinking it was Patton.

 

[Guttersnipe]

The British film, Theirs Is the Glory, which is about the 1st Airborne Division's defense of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, also used original equipment. I read somewhere that, until Fury, it was the only movie to use an actual tiger tank. I believe a lot of the extras in Theirs Is the Glory were also actual paras who fought during Operation Market Garden.

 

[Ghostsoldier]

The British film, Theirs Is the Glory, which is about the 1st Airborne Division's defense of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, also used original equipment. I read somewhere that, until Fury, it was the only movie to use an actual tiger tank. I believe a lot of the extras in Theirs Is the Glory were also actual paras who fought during Operation Market Garden.

It's a good movie (for the post-war standards of the day); here's a clip of the Tiger:

[video=youtube;CVywnQQcz7Y]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVywnQQcz7Y[/video]

Rob

 

[Edward]

It is interesting that it took nearly 50 years before some actual WWII hardware started being used in WWII films. When it comes to the accuracy of costumes and props and vehicles, films made in the last 20 years seem to do a better job of it. I suspect that this is a budget issue, a good deal more money is being spent these days and in the last 20 years or so less of it, proportionally, has been spent on stars. I love seeing a real Tiger or what could easily pass for one.

I think it's a combination of things. Definitely the big budgets come into it. I suspect that, perhaps paradoxically, the relative lack of "close-enough" stuff these days means they have to start from scratch, and if they've got to do that anyway, they might as well get it right. Back in the Sixties when they made films like The Battle of Britain, there was plenty of "close enoughy" available, so the RAF boys wore late-war, mutli-panel Irvins, and the Luftwaffe were kitted out with Lewis-Aviakit. Those sorts of things aren'tg widely available in any motorcycle store or army surplus now, so they have to go to more effort - when 'close enough' is just as expensive, might as well get it right. There does seem to be more of an expectation of accuracy from a large chunk of the audience these days, too, though perhaps it's simply that the proportion of the audience which always noticed these things is empowered to me more vocal about it now, via the internet. Once somebody raised the bar with these things and created audience expectations, though, others had to follow.

I'm just back from Camber, where I was at the Rhythm Riot weekender. Happened to buy a couple of repro 40s-style biker rings from a dealer there. One of his pals sourced a bunch of these, which were then worn by Pitt and his crew in Fury (so I'm told, not seen it yet). Instead of going to him for really solid repros, they bought originals at three times the price. Didn't need to ,but they were given an unlimited budget, pretty much, so... Definitely, the money being thrown at big Hollywood productions these days gives them a leeway that a small studio, especially in the British film industry, just didn't have a few decades ago.

Now they're getting things like uniforms, accessories and haircuts right, I wish they'd move on to accurate depictions of actual events....

 

[Worf]

The British film, Theirs Is the Glory, which is about the 1st Airborne Division's defense of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, also used original equipment. I read somewhere that, until Fury, it was the only movie to use an actual tiger tank. I believe a lot of the extras in Theirs Is the Glory were also actual paras who fought during Operation Market Garden.

No... I remember in "Night of the Generals" with Peter O'Toole as the General leading punitive raids in the Warsaw Ghetto. He stood on or next to what had to be a real Tiger I. Nothing looks or squeeks like it.

Worf

 

[Worf]

Still as I said in another post. They may have got the gear right the premise of veterans risking their lives with a Clerk Typist is Science Fiction. Pitt would've went to the nearest Company Commander and said:

"Gimme your best .30 cal gunner or you can go up there by yourselves."

Case closed.

Worf