Prime Video’s ‘Fury’ Replacement Is the New World War II Hit Dominating Streaming

2 days ago 6

Rahul Malhotra is a Weekend News Writer for Collider. From Francois Ozon to David Fincher, he'll watch anything once.

He has been writing for Collider for over two years, and has covered everything from Marvel to the Oscars, and Marvel at the Oscars. He also writes obsessively about the box office, charting the many hits and misses that are released weekly, and how their commercial performance shapes public perception. In his time at Collider, he has also helped drive diversity by writing stories about the multiple Indian film industries, with a goal to introduce audiences to a whole new world of cinema.

Swing and a miss > measured victory. Also, #JusticeForHan. (He/Him).

Even as the recently released courtroom drama Nuremberg dominates the PVOD charts, another World War II movie that provides an insight into the Nazi mindset is doing phenomenally well on Prime Video. The psychological action film The Tank has consistently been ranking inside the top five of the global Prime Video charts since its release a few days ago, outperforming major holdover hits. The movie follows a five-man crew of a German Tiger tank in 1943, as they go on a secret mission beyond enemy lines to retrieve a missing commandant. As they venture deeper into the battleground, they begin to introspect about the atrocities they've been ordered to commit during the war. The Tank is the rare German movie that presents a Nazi point-of-view, and serves as a counterpoint to the hit Hollywood film Fury.

The film is directed by Dennis Gansel, who broke out several years ago with the gut-wrenching thriller The Wave, in which a high school teacher conducts an experiment to prove just how easy it is to forge a fascist society. The Wave was a major critical and commercial hit, bringing Gansel to Hollywood's attention. He went on to direct Mechanic: Resurrection, the sequel to Jason Statham's The Mechanic. That movie received poor reviews, but grossed $125 million at the worldwide box office, against a reported budget of $40 million. The Tank doesn't have an official Rotten Tomatoes score yet, although its audience score is hovering around the 60% mark. However, according to FlixPatrol, the movie has been doing extremely well on the Prime Video charts, having outperformed Statham's A Working Man, as well as the Ben Affleck-led action sequel The Accountant 2.

'The Tank' Is Inspired by David Ayer's 'Fury'

The film echoes some of the themes that David Ayer explored in his hit film Fury. Released in 2014, the action movie followed a group of American soldiers assigned to the titular tank, as they go from one terrible situation to the next. Fury was headlined by Brad Pitt, with Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Jon Bernthal, and Michael Peña rounding out the rest of the cast. Produced on a reported budget of $80 million, the movie made over $210 million at the worldwide box office. It's now sitting at a "certified fresh" 75% score on Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, "Overall, Fury is a well-acted, suitably raw depiction of the horrors of war that offers visceral battle scenes but doesn't quite live up to its larger ambitions."