Joseph Fiennes and Jude Law in Paramount's "Enemy at the Gates."

MOVIE INFORMATION

With 10 as a must-see, Jack gives this film a: Stars: Jude Law, Ed Harris and Joseph Fiennes Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud Rated: R, with graphic battle violence Length: 129 minutes

ROCHESTERCRITIQUE

Having seen this film, how would you rate it? 10 5 9 4 8 3 7 2 6 1

By Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle

(March 16, 2001) -- Enemy at the Gates tells a gripping tale of opposing snipers, but sometimes at the expense of the story of the bloodiest siege in World War II.

Jude Law and Ed Harris star as opposing snipers in this flawed but impassioned drama.

The battleground is the siege of Stalingrad, the turning point on the Eastern front, where Soviet soldiers faced relentless Nazi assaults.

Director Jean-Jacques Annaud starts with an epic battle scene, a la Saving Private Ryan. Soviet recruits are ferried across the Volga into Stalingrad, and shot by Germans like fish in a barrel. There's horrific action, splattered body parts and much wallowing in blood-stained mud.

But in the aftermath, young Vassili Zaitsev (Law) demonstrates skill as a marksman, killing five Nazis. A Soviet political officer named Danilov (Joseph Fiennes) realizes the demoralized Russians need a hero. He launches news articles through Russia, detailing the exploits of the sniper Zaitsev.

The Nazis also dispatch a marksman, the aristocratic Major Konig (Harris), to hunt down Zaitsev.

Quickly, Enemy at the Gates tightens its focus from the war, or even the siege of Stalingrad, to the treacherous conflict between Zaitsev and Konig. The film's greatest tension arises from four, well-crafted sequences that put the legendary snipers in each other's sights.

Also entangled in their battle is the idealistic Danilov, who exploits it; and a female soldier (Rachel Weisz) who falls for Zaitsev.

The performances, though, lack balance. Law is merely adequate as Zaitsev, and Fiennes, who was so good as Shakespeare in Love, seems adrift as the ill-defined political officer.

Far more successful is Harris, who recognizes the strength in restraint, especially in such volatile circumstances.

Enemy at the Gates has been adapted from William Craig's book of the same name, a history of the Stalingrad siege that includes a dozen pages about Zaitsev, the hero credited with killing 242 Germans.

But although Annaud and his co-writer Alain Godard recognized the dramatic value in the Zaitsev anecdotes, they fail to sufficiently examine the Stalingrad battle itself.

The viewer is never shown the broader picture. A film scroll notes that Zaitsev's rifle is in a Russian museum today. But Annaud should also have informed viewers that the defense of Stalingrad has gone down as history's most devastating bloodbath.

Three-quarters of a million Red Army soldiers were killed, wounded or missing; the Germans lost 400,000 men; the Italians, 130,000 men; and the Hungarians and Romanianslost 320,000. Of the half-million people living in Stalingrad at the start of the war, only 1,515 remained there in 1942.