Enemy at the Gates Reviews

Not so long ago, I have discovered that Sergio Leone’s last movie project was a massive epic about the Stalingrad battle. Apparently, he spent many years making some research about this flick, he managed to gather an impressive $100 million budget but he died just two days before officially signing the contract for this film. It doesn’t get much tragic than this, does it? Apparently, Jean-Jacques Annaud claimed that Leone had wanted him to take over the project, but he bailed when he discovered that there was no actual screenplay. Eventually, many years later Annaud eventually managed to make another movie about Stalingrad. To be honest, it has been a while since I saw this flick and I should definitely re-watch it at some point. Still, I thought it was not bad at all. Indeed, visually, it was pretty impressive, Jude Law and Ed Harris were both quite convincing and the fact that I always had a weak spot for stories dealing with snipers might have helped as well. At the end of the day, I have to admit it, the plot was a little bit disappointing and especially the love triangle involving Jude Law, Joseph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz was really underwhelming. To conclude, even though it is nothing really amazing, it remains a decent war feature and I think it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

Sure i loved it includes great actors. Jude Law and Rachel Weisz are rocks and Ed Harris ! Oh my god what an acting...

Friendship, sacrificing, love and victory, great combat...

And poor Sacha.

''I've been such a fool, Vassili. Man will always be a man. There is no new man. We tried so hard to create a society that was equal, where there'd be nothing to envy your neighbour. But there's always something to envy. A smile, a friendship, something you don't have and want to appropriate. In this world, even a Soviet one, there will always be rich and poor. Rich in gifts, poor in gifts. Rich in love, poor in love.''

Two Russian and German snipers play a game of cat-and-mouse during the Battle of Stalingrad.

Jude Law: Vassili Zaitsev

It begins like a Saving Private Ryan rendition of sorts, bludgeoning us with narration, story and images of war, depicting a grizzly reality of turmoil. Now I was impressed with the opening scenes of battle, the random fighting we essentially seem to be thrown into.
As Enemy at the Gates continues, we get characters thrown together without any explanation or reason. It just happens repeatedly in an array of events, that seem to defy believability.
This being a Russian story, a Soviet tale, it does succeed in being a strange re-telling of history. The Russian Communist soldiers are depicted as expendable morsels, whom strangely all speak English, in strange ways. They shoot soldiers who retreat but don't have enough guns for all their people. Does this make sense? Clearly not. If they spent all that energy actually fighting the enemy rather than attacking their own grunts then they would of actually speeded up defeating the enemy.

Writer/Director Jean-Jacques Annaud, writer Alain Goddard, and cinematographer Robert Fraisse treat the subject matter with confusing strokes of bizarreness and splatterings of action and fighting. It's very tricky to capture certain aspects and some parts feel like they have mixed messages as to why they are taking place. Anyone who's read anything credible about the inhuman suffering the Russian soldiers endured during this battle will have no trouble filling in the gaps that the narrative leaves about their living conditions. The blood and gore shown during the battles is beneficial to the atmosphere. Rather than just expecting you to believe that a solider receives a bullet to the aforementioned head, they show you Nazi and Soviet heroes dealing out death and judgment, so we can relate to them.

''All these men here know they're going to die. So, each night when they make it back, it's a bonus. So, every cup of tea, every cigarette is like a little celebration. You just have to accept that.''

After Enemy at the Gates introduces audiences to the horrific street-to-street, house-to-house, factory-to-factory warfare with the massed armies pitted against each other, and showing German victories, demonstrating the awesome road to victory ahead, faced by the Red army, a subplot of the Stalingrad fight, becomes the plot of this story, killing key Nazi officers with snipers, in a guerrilla tactic maneuver.
The sniper confrontations revolve around the two principals, Vasilli (Jude Kaw) and German Major Konig (Ed Harris). Konig is brought on midstream to provide specialized help, after the sniper successes on the part of the Russians present, the Wehrmacht with problems, it is not trained to encounter. The psychological drama that develops, with no shortage of plausible acting, is among the most captivating and memorable aspects, in this field of film.

''Look at him with pride, because he's looking at you. The whole country is looking at you.''

The Germans' performance in the two World Wars is actually quite watchable, even though they were the losing side, considering their questionable allies and the size and strength of their opponents, Allied Forces. Nevertheless, the analysis is that they plan out every detail with a super organized approach, but make big errors, major errors of judgment, very basic is evaluating their opponents and taking on more than they can deal with. It is unlikely (actually, more like impossible) the Germans would have won WWI even had they occupied Stalingrad (they blew it the year before, by invading Russia too late), although it would have created more difficulties for the Russians (and the U.S. and U.K., heavily supplying them, heavily bombing the Germans, and fighting the Germans in North Africa).

But in any event, the character of Major Konig is not in the usual vein of the over organized, rigid-thinking German. He is steely, in the usual German way, but projects a quiet, more genuine confidence, and is trickier still than his enemies. No particular Nazi party man, he is a professional soldier, not a bad guy (in the evenhanded approach, demanded of modern War story telling, toward at least the common soldier) when he is obliged to kill a civilian, it climaxes a vendetta against him, without sadism or graphic display. He projects a feeling of command and invincibility so compelling that the viewer actually feels he will win, although knowing otherwise. This is no spoiler, of course, yet we are left with the aura that Konig was the better man. It would be a spoiler to say how it was done, and that is another positive for Director Jean-Jacques Annaud. Heroism reigns triumphant for both sides, which is another shining bonus for Enemy at the Gates.

Overall, it's a war film, not to be enjoyed for it's historical accuracy but for it's entertainment value and bemusing performances. We see Rachel Weisz, Bob Hoskins, even Joseph Fiennes whom seems underused, speaking these wonderful English accents, but when we see them they don't really seem Russian. This a Hollywood-ised version of History, which comes of more Patriot than Saving Private Ryan. I'm not saying it's not possible to make a film with English, looks at Boy in the striped Pyjamas and Schindler's List, but Enemy at the Gates makes them look somewhat silly.
Bonuses include battles, costumes, sniping, intellectual mind games and music that resembles Willow especially the German Snipers tune. Enemy at the Gates is a nice try at symbolizing and telling the story of Vassili Zaitsev, the struggle between two classes, socialism and capitalist fascism.

''He doesn't know you exist, but at that moment you're closer to him than anyone else on earth. You see his face through the sign. You see whether he shaved or not. You can see whether he's married if he's got a wedding ring. It's not like firing at a distant shape. It's not just a uniform. It's a man's face. Those faces don't go away. They come back and they get replaced by more faces.''

"On this day, September 20th 1942, a young shepherd boy from the Urals arrived in the city of Stalingrad on the banks of the Volga. His name is Vassilij Zaitzev. Like thousands before him he came to answer comrade Stalin's call. Armed only with a rifle, he quickly made the fascist invader realise that from now on he would be punished for every step he took in the motherland, that from here on the only way was back."

Over the years, movie studios have incessantly produced large scale World War II films that portray a certain part of the long-running war. Enemy of the Gates is one of the latest action thrillers to be produced during Hollywood's recent obsession with war films.

Essentially this film is another attempt at equalling the best war film of all time - Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. With this style of violence and epic battle sequences in mind, this film tackles the battle of Stalingrad and its aftermath.

The Germans are conquering virtually all of Europe and are close to crushing the Soviets. They only need to take control of Stalingrad to complete their plan. Based on an actual historical character, an accurate Russian rifleman named Vassili Zaitsev (Law) emerges as a prominent figure in the army after an act of heroism during the battle of Stalingrad of which he was one of the only Russians to survive. Vassili is an extraordinary marksman who gained quite a reputation during the war. His friend Commisar Danilov (Fiennes) endlessly prints stories about him; praising his skills and intelligence while in combat. The Germans are losing sleep over Vassili's extraordinary skill with a rifle. Because so many men have been lost thanks to a bullet from his rifle, the Germans send in a professional sniper (Harris) to match the skills of Vassili. Soon a sickeningly embarrassing love triangle emerges between Vassili, Danilov and a woman named Tania Chernova (Weisz).

Enemy at the Gates opens with a bang. Its retelling of the battle of Stalingrad is guaranteed to please history enthusiasts, former soldiers and the action junkies. Like the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan, this battle is shown with a high level of realism and gruesome violence. But after these solid opening 25 minutes the film then falls victim to the typical war film syndrome. The whole thing is a solid action thriller with a lot of intensity and breathtaking set design. It succeeds in delivering realism to its source material. It's an incredible shame that the screenwriter had to spoil the whole thing with such a ludicrous romance sub-plot. As soon as an attractive young woman appeared on screen, it was foreseeable that a host of characters would want to get involved with her.

Aside from this endless assortment of clichés and conventions, the film's dialogue isn't much better. I thought that the dialogue sounded unnatural and contrived. Not to mention the blatantly distracting and disconcerting fact that while the Russians write and type in their natural language, they put together a sentence and deliver announcements over radio...while fluent in English! The German soldiers can also speak perfect English. The irony is in the recruiting of translators to translate the German messages. If they keep speaking English, why would a translator be necessary?

The powerhouse performances are among one of the film's redeeming features. But yet again blatant factual errors hurt the film's entertainment value. None of the actors appear to make an effort to produce an accent while delivering dialogue. Jude Law is a great actor for sure. However it looks strange and stupid because he plays a Russian who speaks English in an English accent. At points in the film while no lines are being said and instead facial expressions tell the story...now that's when the performances are first-rate.

Enemy at the Gates also contains some superb production values. The expansive locations look authentic and true to life. As planes fly over we can feel the impact and the palpable fear that the protagonists are exhibiting. The film cleverly tells a nail biting game of cat-and-mouse between two snipers in the battlefield of Stalingrad.

Like all recent war movies the costumes look authentic, the make-up looks superb, cinematography is great, directing is strong and there's a triumphant score as the bow on top. Enemy at the Gates was made with the audience in mind that will enjoy mindless violence as opposed to intelligent dialogue.

Oh my God... i loved it! Well, most of it that i saw. Ill have to watch it again - i missed the first 20 minutes or so.. mann Jude Law is amazing!!