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ENEMY AT THE GATES Send This Review to a Friend
One refreshing aspect of the ambitious "Enemy at the Gates," directed and co-written by French filmmaker Jean-Jacques Annaud, is the remembrance that the Russians had a lot to do with defeating the Nazis in World War II. Most films, at least the jingoistic ones from Hollywood, tend to assume that the Americans won the war almost single-handed, with maybe a bit of help from Britain. "Enemy at the Gates" is set in the thick of the battle of Stalingrad, in which the Soviets took tremendous losses and turned back the German army, which had it prevailed might have completed the goal of overrunning Russia. The wounds inflicted by the Russians took a tremendous toll on Hitler's forces.
Annaud, who co-wrote the screenplay with Alain Godard, starts the film by showing the slaughter of Russian soldiers tossed into the fray and massacred by the better armed Nazi war machine. Those are the most effective moments in the film, which unfortunately turns into a typically hokey combat tale rescued from time to time only by the performances of its good cast. And almost throughout the entire film the overbearing music composed by James Horner thunders relentlessly, thereby undercutting the realism that the director is trying to get on screen.
The story ultimately boils down two snipers stalking each other, one named Vassili, who has been built up into a war hero to inspire fighting fervor and patriotism among the troops, the other Major Konig, a German determined to kill his opponent by outwitting, outstalking and outshooting him. Jude Law plays Vassili, and those familiar with Law's work know how seductive he can be on screen. Having him as a star is a coup. Ed Harris plays Major Konig, and we also know what a mesmerizing actor he can be. Toss in Joseph Fiennes as Danilov, a Russian army man who is churning out propaganda to lionize Vassili.
As surely as men die in action, there has to be a woman in a film like this, and that task falls to Rachel Weisz, who plays Tania. You certainly won't be surprised to learn that Vassili and Danilov are both in love with her. So there you have the basics--a war movie coming down to a face-off between two men and a love triangle. The cliched script cheapens the Stalingrad fighting, even as the filmmakers struggle to show how bloody it all was, which is strikingly depicted in views of the killing and the shattered buildings in decimated areas of the brutalized city. One other casting note: Bob Hoskins is effective portraying the blustery Khruschev as a commander at the front. There are also indications of rumbling against the Soviet system and problems among the brass.
But overall this mixed bag resembles the genre of bloated, heavily scored war movies undone by corny scripts. Still, there are compelling scenes and sequences in the midst of the long, rambling tale, and at least we are reminded how the Russians suffered and what they did to turn back Hitler. That's no small matter in getting history straight. A Paramount release.
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