Fury (2014)

This film is about a tank crew in WW2 that is going into the final days of the war and still facing Hell.
The characters are very credible, and this passes the ultimate test of "credible characters in incredible circumstances".
The five members each have a different level of humanity, from the novice to war who still has total humanity down to the one tank crew member who is a total brute. Yet even he has some humanity left in him, but he hardly shows it.
The other three are the tank commander (Brad Pitt), who handles brutality of war with objectivity, his second, who handles brutality by trying to be right with God, and the other one uses comedy to handle it.
I've been in the military, and it is quite common for "clerks" to be tossed into war like cannon fodder, because that is what "clerks" are viewed as being by everyone else, from officers down to the one stripers.
In fact, the clerks are considered to be the most disposable members of the forces.
We know that today. People didn't always know it in WW2.
The final self sacrifice at the end seems a bit much, but when you take into consideration that it's a spare of the moment decision, and mistakes are made with quick decisions, it's plausible. Not probable, but plausible.
Also, the final battle scene with five men doing so well against an incredibly larger force; well, that is sold to us by the amount of smoke around the tank, and the fact that if you are on the other side, surrounding the tank, you wonder if you are shooting at your own teammates across from you.
I think it would have been a better movie if the five soldiers all just abandoned the tank and tried to walk back to safety, but that's just me.
Other than that, it was an exceptional film that passes all the tests.

I knew that quite a few people had complained about the realism in this movie even though it hold high ratings on most movie sites. I was hoping that the complaints were mostly nitpicking like wrong model of Sherman tank and such like. Well, I am afraid that it was a bit more than that. I would say that this movie is clearly written by some Hollywood writer sitting in his comfy chair and never ever having been close to any military activities, not to mention live action, in his life.
I can live with a movie being inaccurate or somewhat unrealistic if the rest of the movie is good but I have to say that I did not really like the movie even after trying to filter out the unrealistic nonsense.
The movie is very dark and gritty and there are really no likeable characters in it whatsoever. Well, the clerk that got thrown in as a tank machinegun gunner was perhaps somewhat likable but then him getting assigned as a tank machinegun gunner in the first place was one of those nonsensical bits. In this movie the “heroes” are not really any better than the Nazis. The scene where “Wardaddy” forces previously mentioned clerk to shoot an unarmed POW is just disgusting. I am sure this is not too far from reality in some cases during the war but I’ll be damned if I am watching a movie to be entertained by it.
Having said that I must also say that the movie was very well done in terms of acting and cinematography with one exception. The ridiculous overuse of tracer bullet effects. Tracer bullets do not look like you are in a Star Wars movie and yes I have been using tracer bullets during my military service, obviously unlike the producer and consultants (if they had any) of this movie.
The pacing of the movie was somewhat uneven. Some of it was fairly fast paced but then some parts, like the part in the apartment of the two German women was quite slow and somewhat dull.
The “last stand” at the end was just silly and nonsensical. It started pretty much right away when the poor clerk spots the arriving German infantry just using his eyes. Then it just takes forever until they actually arrive so our “heroes” have all the time in the world to prepare. There would of course be no way for a lone Sherman to hold off an assault like that and the Germans would of course not be charging around shooting useless fine caliber weaponry against said Sherman. Also when they had all this time to prepare why the f… did they leave some of the ammo outside the tank? Obviously because some dumb scriptwriter thought it would make for a good scene. And do not get me started on the fact that the Germans apparently just stops in their tracks every time the director thinks it is time for some slow scene inside the tank.
The ending? Well I do not like bad endings and this one certainly did not give me any feeling of reward for having suffered through over two hours of this movie. Needless to say I am a tad disappointed.