A war movie very much worth watching

Rating: 9/10 (6 April 2001)

It is a very good movie, I did not notice that it was actually more than two hours long. Perhaps it was more emotional for me than for other people, since my grandfather perished in the siege of Stalingrad.

The movie has superb acting as well as few flaws.
Jude Law gave wonderful performance, he looked 100% Russian soldier during the siege, thin, dirty, desperate. I liked Joseph Fiennes's Othello like jealosy, when he saw Vassili and Tania together. Rachel Weizs and especially Ed Harris were superb too.
Visuals of battle scenes and pictures of city devastation were stunning, the war was bloody and ugly, like every war really is.
I am quite surprised that nobody here mentions the most obvious goof, the fact that Nikita Khruschev NEVER was neither commander in chief, nor major officer of the Stalingrad front. In fact, he was a political officer like Danilov during the war. I am not even sure if he was at Stalingrad at all. It almost escaped my mind, why would screenwriter put him in this position, when I realized that Khruschev is well known in America. He famously gave speech in United Nations and put missiles in Cuba. While the real mastermind behind Russian victory in Stalingrad (as well as the whole WWII victory on Eastern Front in Europe) was general Georgiy Zhukov. But who would know him in America, except for geeks, watching the History Channel? Given the fact that movie slightly exagerrates with painting Russian Army black, perhaps it is not too bad, that Khrushev will take the blame instead of real hero Zhukov. Though Khruschev's son is a history professor and naturalized American citizen now, I think he has a strong case for libel. Anyway, the movie is fiction, not a documentary, at least here Russians won, not somebody else (case in point, U-571).
As many people have already pointed, movie also downplays the fact that Russians fought for survival and defended their motherland and did not always have to be motivated with bullets from their own political officers.
In spite of these obvious flaws, I still think that this is a great movie. It shows courageous and noble people as well as the scum. And what is the greatest thing, that now Americans will learn that Russians fought in WWII too! Seriously, this movie might get few people read something about this period in history. Martha Stuart would have said that this is a good thing. Don't you think so?