Enemy At The Gates is a film that's overflowing with anti-Communism. I hate it.

Rating: 4/10 (6 July 2010)

French film director Jean-Jacques Annaud should be ashamed of this film. I know there's plenty of anti-Communism in the French media, but this is going too far. He managed to make a misleading film about the most important battle of the 20th century, and then he put it into wide release so that as many people as possible would watch it. The amount of bias and misrepresentation in this film is astonishing. Here's a list of some of the things that are wrong with it:

the Western actors playing Russians don't behave or talk like Russians. - Russian soldiers were not brought to the front line in cattle trucks like Jews being sent off to German concentration camps. - the Russians did not mount suicide charges against the Germans, but fought them house to house. - Nikita Khrushchev (played by Bob Hoskins) was not a murderous old fatso. This is 1942 we're talking about, not 1962. At that time he was much younger and slimmer. - the toothless Koulikov was included in the film just to make people think that Stalin has people tortured. And maybe to show off Konig's sniping skills. - Russian soldiers were not hooligans who made out, drank vodka, and play farting games at night. They instead tried to get as much sleep as they could during the battle. - the morale of the Red Army did not depend on Zaitsev's sniping successes. - Danilov was included in the film mostly to show that there were political commissars in the Soviet Union. In reality the commissars were excluded from the army during the war. - there were no huge statues of Joseph Stalin everywhere in Stalingrad. - huge portraits of Stalin didn't hang in the Red Army headquarters. - it was the Russians who played the speech mentioning that every 7 seconds a German soldier dies in Russia. This was done when the Germans were close to defeat. - the Red Army did not offer lavish banquets to heroes like Zaitsev. The man stealing the fruit from the table was included just to make people think that there's inequality in the Soviet Union. - before he gets killed, Danilov makes a speech. What's it about? It's an anti-Communist speech. - the film includes sniper duels that don't take place in real life. - Stalingrad is the bloodiest battle in human history, but in this film you don't get to understand the scale of the battle at all. - while watching Enemy At The Gates I got the impression that more Red Army soldiers were killed by their superiors than by the Germans. The film falsely shows Red Army officers killing their soldiers left and right because of cowardice. - the Russians were not short on rifles during this battle. Russians had all the equipment they needed in this battle. - Konig's fantastic shooting isn't possible in real life. - the "sniper's duel" shown in the film is fictional. The real duel between Zaitsev and Konig was different.

Watching this film viewers may easily think that it's the invading Germans and not the Russian defenders who are the good guys. It's certain that the director is fond of the Germans, and that he's anti-Communist. While reading the comments here it became clear to me that most viewers take this film seriously. Because they don't know better they'll be left thinking that this is how Russians behave and that this is what the war was like. This sort of film-making is really unprofessional. The director should have at least done some research and watched some Russian films before filming the dreadful Enemy At The Gates. Also, he should have put aside his political views.