A much needed correction to the American view of the war

Rating: Null/10 (22 March 2001)

They are very few western-made films about the Second World War's Eastern Front. After all, although the casualty toll  around 20M dead overall, including up to a million at Stalingrad alone - far exceeded that on the West, it was not American or British but Soviet lives which were lost. The two such works that I have seen are `Cross Of Iron' (1977) and `Stalingrad' (1992).
Now French director Jean-Jacques Annaud (`The Name Of The Rose') offers us `Enemy At The Gates' which is also about the ferocious 1942 Battle of Stalingrad, but  a novel angle for a war film  this is set around a personal duel between crack snipers. The movie has provoked some controversy since, while the Soviet marksman Vasily Zaitsev (played by Jude Law) did exist, the German shooter Major Konig (Ed Harris) was almost certainly an invention of Communist propaganda. However, such minor tampering with history is certainly not on a par with the travesties in `U-571' or `The Patriot'.
The sets and special effects  it was filmed in Berlin  are stunning in their verisimilitude and some of the action sequences, especially at the beginning, approach those in `Saving Private Ryan' in the brutality of their impact. Bob Hoskins impresses in a cameo role as the young Nikita Krushchev. Nevertheless the rivalry for the affections of woman soldier Tania (Rachel Weisz) is too sentimental and the script far too weak for this to be as good a film as it could have been.