As a war movie, "Enemy At The Gates", director Jean-Jacques Annaut's fact-based account of the duel between two master snipers during the battle of Stalingrad in 1942, is entertaining and sometimes even very good, but it really works only infrequently. It would have done well to draw more from "War Of The Rats", David L. Robbins's superb book about the same subject, but too many times it goes for tired formula moments. This practice, along with sometimes choppy editing, bog the picture down and make it less than it could've been.

The movie begins with an unnecessary prologue in which the Russian hero, Vasily Zaitsev (Jude Law), flashes back to his wolf-hunting childhood in the Ural Mountains. We then see him as a man, on his way via train to Stalingrad, where the Nazis are mounting a major offensive as part of their plan to conquer the Soviet Union.

The scariest part of the film is a sequence in which the Soviet troops are crossing the Volga River to the city in rickety boats. German planes appear, and begin strafing the boats with machine gun fire. Although it's a brief moment and doesn't approach "Saving Private Ryan"'s D-Day invasion sequence, it's still terrifically intense, giving you a sense of terror and helplessness as well as conveying the randomness of death in war. Men inside the boats are hit, left and right. Vasily cowers, wondering whether he'll be next. Some frightened soldiers jump into the river and are immediately shot by their own officers for cowardice.

After they make it to the city, the men find that, due to shortages, only one out of every two men is issued a weapon. "When the man in front of you is killed," the commanding officer yells calmly, "Take his rifle and shoot!" Now, there's Socialism in action.

Vasily doesn't initially get a rifle, but somehow makes it through the barrage of German bullets and mortars. He gets a chance to prove his shooting skills during an accidental meeting with Danilov (Joseph Finnes), a young political officer. Vasily dispatches five Germans, almost all with clean head shots, in a space of 30 seconds. Danilov, whose job is to boost morale among the troops (along with ratting out anyone who might be reading the wrong books), sees he has a star on his hands. He befriends Vasily and puts his picture on the front page of the Soviet newspapers. The kid makes great shots, and he makes even better propaganda.

Complications ensue. Into the picture comes Tania (Rachel Weizt), a Jewish partisan who joins up with the team of snipers being trained by Vasily. Naturally, she falls for him, and the feeling is mutual. Here's where the film takes a dive into soap-opera-level melodrama, depicting Danilov as having feelings for Tania as well (Robbins's novel makes no mention of Danilov having any romantic attachment to her whatsoever). It influences his command decisions and, ultimately, is his undoing. How Danilov deals with his guilt at having tried to manipulate the love triangle by playing with his friends' lives is noble, but it seems gratuitous and implausible.

The meat of the picture is the contest of wills between Vasily and Major Konig (Ed Harris), a master sniper from Germany who's assigned to locate Vasily among the ruins of Stalingrad and take him out. This accounts for the best parts of "Enemy", such as a tightly wound cat-and-mouse game inside a demolished department store and a very cool sequence in which Vasily seems trapped by Konig but manages to out-fox the fox.

Ed Harris is probably the most engaging movie actor working today, but unfortunately, the movie gives him the least to do of all the actors. Nevertheless, Harris steals the picture, as he usually does (check out "The Firm" and "The Right Stuff", my two favorite Harris performances). British fireplug Bob Hoskins also has some nice moments as a pre-Kitchen Debate Nikita Krushchev.

A major distraction in the movie is the accents; Harris still speaks like he's from Ohio, and the other actors, all British, play their Russian roles with what seem like even more pronounced British accents. You'd think a group of trained thesbians like this would have at least tried to affect a small Russian twinge to their words.

On the upside, the action sequences are well-done, although Annaud tends to rely a bit too much on slow-motion shots. Slo-mo can be an effective tool when used sparingly, but if too frequent, becomes merely a flashy gimmick. In depicting the bombed-out, decimated city of Stalingrad, the filmmakers spared no expense, and it's a masterpiece of set design.

The film's music, nicely-made but a little pedestrian, is by James Horner, who I think does the music for every movie made since 1990, including "Dude, Where's My Car?", and "Freddy Got Fingered". He's done them all. I'm sure of it.

I recommend "Enemy At The Gates", particularly to fans of war pictures, although it could've been a more intense and rewarding experience without the made-up love triangle to satisfy the "Titanic" demographic. Truth is not just stranger than fiction; sometimes, it's just plain better.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age