Enemy at the Gates

All in all a brilliant war epic and a totally gratifying 2 hour plus experience.

Fantastic depiction of the bleak situation in Stalingrad,fantastic music,fantastic sniper scenes,great acting.

It might be a little bit flawed in the depiction of the Russian idiosyncracy,as all Western depictions unavoidably are because they are addressing western audiences.

Nevertheless the cat and mouse game between Zaitchev and his German counterpart are nothing short of outstanding and engaging.

It is touching,too,watching all the future acting stars at their,more or less,beginnings. Very appetizing appearances. The elder statesmen,as Ed Harris, are brilliant as usual.

Highly recommended!!!

Not a bad war film - but only if you know nothing about the actual battle. The film makers are entitled to take artistic license, and although some historical characters are present in the film, it never even comes close to portraying the battle as it was. Much of the fighting lacks reality and the computer generated Stuka dive bombers attacking reinforcements crossing the Volga are totally unrealistic.

The film takes a quick peek at several themes of the actual battle but explores none - including the character of Zaitsev himself, whose role in the battle was quite different from Law's character. It is worth mentioning that several other Russian snipers, in Stalingrad and elsewhere, killed many more Germans than Zaitsev. It is also amazing how many people believe that Konig is based on a real character called Hartmann, A good tale, but untrue. Still, its a decent film, but the real Stalingard epic has yet to be made

No doubt the title is an indication of what the film would LIKE to be about. The Germans forces were indeed "at the gates" - they are on the verge of capturing Stalingrad, they would lay siege to Leningrad, and at one point even Moscow appeared to be in danger. The situation was desperate. But after we're told all this, the position of the German army turns out to have no more to do with the story than the position of the sun in the zodiac. After a bitter, violent battle over - well, we're never told - nothing of a military nature happens again. Not even offstage. (Until the end, when, after a brief "offensive" of unfathomable significance, an epilogue tells us that the Germans were repelled from after all.) All the action in Stalingrad freezes so that we can watch a protracted duel between a Russian and a German sniper.

Now I'm prepared to believe that snipers played a valuable role in this kind of warfare - I wouldn't know - but Vassili's primary value, we must assume in the absence of information to the contrary, is as propaganda - a means of keeping up the morale of the local troops. But there's something circular here. The snipers are the only people we see doing any actual fighting, and by the end of the film they seem to be devoting all their efforts to shooting a German sniper who is in turn doing nothing but trying to shoot Vassili. What does ANY of this have to do with, you know, the invasion?

The fact that the troops of a hostile foreign power are on Russian soil (they haven't yet been defeated, and it looks to be only a matter of time before even Moscow would be overrun) doesn't seem to motivate the characters to do much. Nobody makes a single decision for the good of the war effort as a whole. Danilov builds up the Vassili legend because of personal feelings and is ready to tear it down later for other personal reasons; Tania wants to kill Germans - kill them herself, by hand, rather than help her fellow soldiers as best she can by working in intelligence - because they killed her parents; Danilov tries to transfer her to a safer job not because that's where she should be (it's a mere coincidence that that IS where she should be), but because he's hitting on to her; Vassili's heart isn't in the duel with the German sniper until he has a casual acquaintance's death to avenge. When Sacha's mother is told that her son is a traitor (now serving the forces who have bombed the city she grew up in to rubble), her only reaction is, "Perhaps he'll be safer with them than with us." Wherever we look, we see dreary personal concerns. Did any of these people notice that the enemy IS at the gates?

If Anaud was trying to make his characters more plausible by making them pettier, he failed. When Sacha tells a third party what we supposedly already know - that Tania is in love with Vassili - it came as news to me. I hadn't seen any insipient love anywhere. I suppose I ought to have worked it out, by assuming that the single female character must be there to fall in love with someone and using a process of elimination to work out who it was (she plainly didn't care for one of the two candidates, therefore she must be head over heels with the other one), but really, even in a movie as dull as this, I have better things to do.

In "Enemy at the Gates," the future of the greatest battle of World War II, would be decided between a young Russian sniper and an aristocratic sharpshooter from Germany sent to kill him… Jude Law and Ed Harris sit for hours waiting for the right moment… It was a duel set in the siege of Stalingrad… Stalingrad was one of the biggest and bloodiest battles of World War II, and in the midst of this huge battle, these two soldiers were hunting each other down…

The film opens with the harrowing transport of thousand of Russian soldiers across the Volga River to Stalingrad… The recruits were packed onto steamers, barges, whatever they could find to ferry them across the river… All that under a deluge of shells, bombs and explosions…

By the time Vassili arrives to Stalingrad, the Nazis have a distinct edge, and Soviet morale is at an all-time low…

Leading the Russians in their seemingly futile defense is Nikita Kruschev, played by Bob Hoskins… The Germans, at that time, were overrunning the place and the Russians were in an appalling state… It was the most awful battle of the war…

Joseph Fiennes plays Danilov, an idealistic Russian officer who passionately speaks about his belief in getting the troops to turn the grave situation in Stalingrad around… He finds the perfect inspiration in Vassili…

Rachel Weisz plays a young woman who volunteers to help in the war effort… She's literally protecting the people she grew up with… When she meets Vassili, he just has a natural intelligence, a natural instinct…

Jude Law is remarkable as the young sharpshooter Vassili Zaitsev who conveyed both humanity and intensity… There's such a fierce intelligence and liveliness in his eyes… He can also be very quiet and internal… Vassili found the complexity within the silence and stillness… In fact to be a sniper is very much about a man of action through stillness… Vassili represented the ultimate hero, the symbol of someone who could instill hope and belief in victory amongst the troops, because his skills as a sniper were unparalleled…

Ed Harris played Major Konig, the German sharpshooter sent to hunt down Vassili… He knows that Vassili was picking off German officers with some regularity, and was becoming a folk hero for the Russian soldiers as well as the Russian populace... He decided to eliminate him…

The casting of Ed Harris opposite Jude Law resulted in a striking visual link between their characters… They both have these unbelievably penetrating blue eyes… And director Jean-Jacques Annaud began to see the duel through their eyes… And one of the first shots of Ed Harris was a close-up of his blue eyes…

Annaud painted the tensions very clearly and concentrated purely on the eyes of the Jude Law and Harris and, of course, on their rifles and how they were hidden and what they were doing… Basically, the core of his camera is the duel of their eyes, duel of men, duel of snipers, therefore a confrontation of people that scan the surrounding buildings, and try to decipher what they see

I simply want to weigh in with a very positive response to Enemy at the Gates. Taken as a historical drama rather than an attempt to flawlessly depict an historical incident, this is topnotch entertainment. "Enemy" portrays the conflict between a young Russian sniper played by Law and the German sniper (Harris) who is sent to kill him during the German attack on Stalingrad during WWII. Apart from a scene which awkwardly caricatures the Russian field commanders and the occasionally distracting accents, the film successfully immerses the viewer in this tense war drama. Appreciate it it for its tight focus, uncompromising realism, and fine characterizations by the main actors. Research the historical accuracy later, if you must, but don't let it spoil the film.