Enemy At The Gates

ENEMY AT THE GATES

Rating: A-

The opening scenes of this film are nothing short of spectacular, as green Russian draftees are shipped off to the battle of Stalingrad. While enemy shells explode all around, a Russian official coldly explains through a megaphone that as soon as one soldier falls, the next in line must pick up his rifle and resume firing until he too is killed. If you know your World War 2 history, you know Stalingrad marked the turning point in the war between the Soviet Union and Germany. Pushed all the way back to the Volga river by the invading German army, the Russians stubbornly dug in their heels among the city's ruins, and slowly turned the tide of battle permanently in their favor. Director Jean-Jacques Annaud immerses us in chaotic scenes of untrained men armed only with a rifle and a handful of bullets being forced into frontline battle by a desperate Soviet command, and being torn to shreds by the far superior Nazi firepower. When the war was over, the Soviet Union had lost over 8 million soldiers - more than double the casualties suffered by Germany, and many times more than the U.S. and England combined.

As the film shows us, amidst the terrain of bombed-out buildings the battle devolves into guerrilla warfare. From this setting arises Soviet sharpshooter Vassili Zaitsev (Jude Law), whose skills as a sniper earn him a reputation that the Soviet propaganda machine (led by Joseph Fiennes) eagerly exploits. As his kill tally rises, the Germans decide that although they want all Russians dead, they'd like this one dead in particular. So they dispatch Ed Harris, a major Nazi (er, make that a Nazi major) who knows a thing or two about sniping himself, to do the dirty work.

What follows is a cat-and-mouse game between Law and Harris among the rubble of what once were Stalingrad's factories and department stores. Like the Tom Berrenger film Sniper, the confrontation is one less of action than of quiet stalking, and of hours spent lying hidden waiting for the other guy to make a mistake and reveal his position. (Also like Sniper, the filmmakers seem to have a strange fascination with bullets through the eye.) Although interesting, these scenes don't match the opening scenes in terms of drama or spectacle.

Annaud succeeds in making us care about the characters, helped in no small part by strong performances from Law and Fiennes, and also Rachel Weisz as a female sniper whom Law falls in love with. When Law spends one night boinking Weisz while all the soldiers around him are sleeping, he misses an opportunity to kill Harris the next day because he falls asleep on the job. You'd think his high school wrestling coach would've warned him about having sex the night before a big match. Also on hand is Bob Hoskins as Nikita Krushchev, who was a lieutenant general in the Soviet army at the time of the battle. Although the film doesn't explicitly state it, it's probably not too far of a stretch to assume the Soviet victory at Stalingrad was a key factor in propelling Krushchev's later political career.

As if being of the Nazi persuasion wasn't bad enough, Harris's character commits an atrocity late in the film carefully calculated to make you hate his guts. And this actually raises a problematic point. Up until then, we were rooting for Law because he was on the side of the good guys and Harris was a Nazi. We didn't stop to examine our motives - we just followed the lead of the filmmakers. But then Harris proves he's really a meany, as if director Annaud is afraid the audience might feel sympathy for him. The whole matter smacks of condescension and pandering, and cheapens the film's impact. Worse yet, it caused me to stop and think about why I was rooting against Harris to begin with, which in turn raises the whole "is a soldier who's merely following orders absolved of guilt?" question. In a film such as this, it's a question better left unasked.

This movie is supposedly based on true events. Vassili's exploits as a Russian soldier, and his wartime romance with a female sniper are well-documented. However, whether Germany really sent a high-ranking marksman to hunt him down, or whether the tale was entirely a fabrication of Soviet propaganda, seems a subject of considerable debate. You can read more about it here and here.