Almost great, but not quite

Rating: 7/10 (9 April 2001)

This movie was really close to great. It's hard to say exactly where it missed. The love story part was a tad too cheesy I think. The war scenes were fantastic, very well done. I was horrified when I was supposed to be. The truth of battle being a terrifying, confusing and dirty business was well done.
The acting was also quite good. Ed Harris in particular is very good as you might expect. I guess it must be something in the pacing as I looked at my watch twice, both times during the romantic bits. Don't get me wrong, I'm actually a sucker for romance but there was just something not quite right. My wife complained that Russians shouldn't sound British and maybe they shouldn't but at least nobody was trying (badly) to sound Russian which would bother me more.
All in all I could recommend this for the fighting/sniper scenes. It's decent but it's not great. 7/10