Enemy at the Gates (2001)-"R"

Run Time:130 minutes

2 and 1/2 stars out of 4

I was looking forward to Jean-Jacques Annaud's Enemy at the Gates, but left the theater sadly disappointed. Annaud previously has directed films that I've enjoyed, like The Name of the Rose and Seven Years in Tibet, but I had major problems with this latest film. The story is set in 1942 Stalingrad, right at the height of the Nazi's battle for Russia. This battle was a key victory for the Russians, stopping the devastating Nazi charge through Eastern Europe. The main character is a young Russian sniper, the legendary Vassily Zaitsev (played by Jude Law), who is catapulted into fame by a zealous communications officer, Danilov (Joseph Fiennes), after Zaitsev takes out a high-ranking Nazi field officer and all of his attending guards and staff. After this small victory, Zaitsev repeatedly takes out German officers and, with the help of Danilov's heroic explanations of Zaitsev's actions in the army newspaper, becomes a hero to the exhausted and frightened Russian troops. The Nazis become aware of Zaitsev and his amazing talent, and they send in their own sniper prodigy, Major Koenig (Ed Harris), to track down and take out the elusive Zaitsev. A personal battle erupts between the two snipers after Koenig kills Zaitsev's sniper companion, Koulikov (Ron Perlman). Meanwhile a love triangle is going on between Zaitsev, a local militiawoman, Tania (Rachel Weisz), and the jealous and lovelorn Danilov. There also is a subplot involving Sasha Filipov (Gabriel Thomson), and his mother, who are trying to survive in the rubble that is Stalingrad. Saying much more would give away the ending, so I will stop there. Like I said before, I had several major problems with this movie. For one, why do all of the Russian characters switch between Russian and English accents, and why is some of the text in newspapers and such in English and some in Russian, but with subtitles? Consistency in this area would be nice, as the changes just distracted me. Also, why does Sasha, the little boy spying for the Russians, always have perfectly powdered cheeks, a clean face, and perfect teeth all throughout the movie? He was also incredibly annoying to me, because he could not act well at all, and was just there to try and draw a sappy emotional outcry from the audience. On the whole, I thought that Annaud did a good job with the film, with a truly desolate looking war-torn Stalingrad and powerful battle scenes, but I thought he tried to do too much. I just couldn't go for the emotion overkill, and most of the scenes that meant to be dramatic just came across as cheesy to me. I think that Jean-Jacques Annaud's Enemy at the Gates is worth seeing, but not the amazing World War Two drama it was made out to be.