Directed by: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Starring: Jude Law, Joseph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz, Ed Harris, Bob Hoskins, Gabriel Marshall-Thomson
This is a frustrating movie, with greatness in its grasp, but it keeps tripping over itself. Based on a true story, at least according to Russian historical perspective, Enemy at the Gates features a top notch cast and a central plot which drags. The story, about a cat and mouse duel between a Nazi sniper (Harris) and a Soviet sniper (Law) during the Battle of Stalingrad, is one with potential suspense soon eclipsed by our own impatience. We wish they would get to it already. And when they do, it is anti-climactic anyway.
The Battle of Stalingrad was a significant Soviet victory against the advancing Nazi front in late 1942-early 1943. The town is reduced to ruins, but the Soviet army perseveres despite flagging morale and even more desperate odds. Having lost half of their soldiers, the Soviet brass led by Nikita Khruschev (Hoskins-who looks uncannily like him) is in need of something to keep the fight going. An officer named Danilov (Fiennes) thinks he knows what the people need. During a tense opening battle which draws comparisons to the D-Day opener of Saving Private Ryan, Danilov witnesses a heroic soldier named Vassily Zaytsev (Law) shoot down several German soldiers with his rifle. Danilov's brainstorm is the propagandize Vassily's exploits and turn him into someone the people can rally around. Vassily's heroics are plastered in the local papers and word of his deeds spreads to Stalin himself. Vassily becomes a celebrity amidst the war-torn Russian ruins, which draws the attention of Major Konig (Harris), a master Nazi sniper dispatched to Stalingrad to kill Vassily and squelch the last hopes of the Stalingrad residents.
Vassily and Konig are both professionals and expert sharpshooters, but are a study in personality contrasts. Vassily is approachable, affable, lacking confidence in his ability to kill Konig, and in love with Tanya (Weisz), a college-educated soldier also admired by Danilov. There is a potential love triangle here which the movie could surely do without, although Weisz has a great smile and lights up the screen. Konig is a cold man of duty, who doesn't allow himself to be flustered or emotional, and is supremely confident in his skills. ("You know how I know Vassily is still alive? Because I haven't killed him yet,") He befriends a young boy named Sacha (Marshall-Thomson), who pretends to be a Nazi sympathizer but is actually a double agent. In a critical scene, Konig has to choose between his friendship with Sacha and his sworn duty to the German cause, which probably causes him the most discomfort he will exhibit in the entire movie. Harris, who is brilliant here as custom, doesn't make the mistake of making Konig a mad, frothing villain, but an intelligent professional with a certain respect for Vassily and maybe even a certain sympathy masked behind a flat, calm voice. But, he tracks Vassily because that is what he does best.
It isn't the performances or even the production values which undermine Enemy at the Gates, but the stop and start nature of the plot. There are too many scenes of either Vassily or Konig peering into a rifle scope at his potential target, which manages to stay just out of reach of a deadly bullet. They grow tiresome. The movie could've spared twenty minutes of running time if they had one big duel instead of several little ones which build up to the climactic one. But, we get the suspicion the big duel has to wait because we have various subplots to tidy up first, such as the love triangle and Danilov's smoldering jealousy which triggers a treacherous action.
Thankfully the actors don't speak in tortured German or Russian accents, which I find to be distracting in movies like this. We get it. They're Russian. Why bother speaking in an accent which only proves the actors mastered accents in acting school? Harris doesn't use an accent at all, which is all the more refreshing. Enemy at the Gates is supposedly based on truth, but there has never been confirmation that such a battle between Zaytsev (who died in 1991) and Konig ever took place. Or that there was ever even a Konig. Is the story yet one more account published by the infamous Soviet propaganda machine? Regardless, I just wish it were told more tautly.
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