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Overall Rating
  Awesome: 24.41%
Worth A Look: 40.94%
Average: 13.39%
Pretty Bad: 16.54%
Total Crap: 4.72%
7 reviews, 85 user ratings
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| Enemy at the Gates |
by Preston Jones
"Eh...at least there's shootouts..."

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Director Jean-Jacques Annaud's newest film, Enemy at the Gates, starts strong but loses steam towards the finale. It is a taut tale of World War II-torn Stalingrad and the expert snipers who do battle among the ruins of the Russian city.The first entry in this year's busy slate of WWII films (Michael Bay's $135 million epic Pearl Harbor is due in May and John Woo's drama Windtalkers is reportedly set for a Christmas release, among many others), Enemy at the Gates tells the story of one Vassily Zaitsev (Jude Law, in an intense performance), a foot soldier in Stalin's Red Army during the latter days of WWII. A simple recruit from the Ural Mountains, Vassily discovers early on in life that he has a talent for shooting with deadly accuracy. The Russian army discovers Vassily's talent through Dasilov (played by Joseph Fiennes, rather apathetically) who meets Vassily under excruciating circumstances, and witnesses his talents as a sharpshooter. Soon, Dasilov is given permission by a young Nikita Krushchev (Bob Hoskins, in a noisy performance) to promote Vassily as the savior of the Russian army. Vassily, immediately uncomfortable with the role of hero, nonetheless shoulders his weapon and continues to fight for Stalin. Soon, his legend spreads and the German army becomes concerned enough to send for one of their most lethal assassins, the feared Major Koenig (Ed Harris, steely-eyed and grim). Koenig engages Vassily in a tense game of cat and mouse with astronomical stakes. While he's locked in a struggle with the great German sniper, Vassily begins to fall in love with Tania, (Rachel Weisz), a Jewish Russian soldier whom Danilov also fancies. The love triangle that soon develops only causes Vassily more concern, while the Germans continue to pound Stalingrad in hopes of capturing it. All these intertwining threads build to a breathless climax where few are left standing and lives are forever changed. Director/co-writer Annaud (with Alain Godard) makes only a few missteps in his newest film, the chief one being the introduction of a romantic subplot in the form of Tania. Had her part been excised, the film would have been much stronger, not to mention shorter. The movie begins to drag towards the end, especially after the story is resolved and a needless postscript is tacked on. The cast is excellent, with the standouts being Law and Harris, who make the dueling snipers both believable and human. A drawback that could potentially hinder the overall suspension of disbelief for audiences is that all the actors speak in English, most with noticeable British accents. Fans of war dramas and those looking for romance among shrapnel will definitely enjoy Annaud's latest work.Enemy at the Gates, while neither fresh nor particularly surprising, still manages to engross and thrill while painting a mostly realistic portrait of WWII Russia and the gruesome struggles that went on.
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=4699&reviewer=304 originally posted: 02/19/02 14:48:59
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USA 16-Mar-2001 (R)
UK N/A
Australia 26-Jul-2001 (M)
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