Stuck in two moments.

Rating: 5/10 (9 August 2001)

"Enemy at the Gates" is a well made film with many tense, exciting and sometimes breathtaking scenes.The problem is that it doesn't seem to know what it is doing. Is it an epic view of a world changing moment? or is it a cat and mouse struggle against an unseen enemy? It could work as either but not as both. The Nazi invasion and the Soviet resistance almost seems redundant and is constantly reiterated with clumsy annoyance. The movie could, I believe, have worked better in an unnamed city, with two unnamed adversaries in an environment of war. The tension would have been the same, the excitement and the horror as nerve tingling and the concept would not have been tarnished by a half hearted attempt at historical representation.