Far Better than the Average War Movie

Rating: Null/10 (5 July 2001)

The battle of Stalingrad must qualify for any list of the most brutal military confrontations in history. This film has been criticized for 'trivializing' the reality of that time in that place. For an even more grisly depiction of the horrors of war, see the German film Stalingrad, by the same production group that created the excellent Das Boot.
Still, Enemy At the Gates hardly trivializes the subject matter. The Volga river-crossing scene is as harrowing, perhaps even more so, than the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan. With respects to Normandy veterans, the casualty toll and the historical significance of the D-Day invasion do not bear comparison to what happened in Stalingrad.
For an antiwar message, this film is far more eloquent than Spielberg's homage to the D-day invasion. In Enemy At the Gates, as in Stalingrad, there are ultimately no good guys or bad guys: it is simply a story of people under one flag fighting and killing people under another flag. Nazi, Soviet, good, evil... it doesn't matter. This was Stalingrad. To the extent morality is depicted, it is depicted as a personal matter and not a simple question of which side one is fighting for.
For military enthusiasts, the depiction is within acceptable limits of reality. The German tanks are Mk.III Panzers (not 1960's-vintage M-60's with black crosses painted on them), the planes are Ju-87's and He-111's, and so on. A friend who is a trained sniper tells me that issues of range, accuracy, and penetration are depicted somewhat loosely, but still, there are few of the usual glaring Hollywood liberties taken with military history. The worst error I spotted was the use of a late-war model Russian T-34(85) tank, appearing here about 18 months too early on the timeline... a very minor anachronism by movie standards.
As far as it is possible to weave a love story into a reasonably believable war story without becoming ridiculous, this film accomplishes that questionable feat; certainly many other war films have attempted the same thing with far worse results. The love triangle between the Red Army sniper (Law), the Soviet Commisar (Fiennes), and the Rachel Weisz character does serve to highlight significant elements of the conflict that is the heart of the story, unlike most war-movie romances that seem 'tacked on' as a kind of afterthought; here, at least, the love story is interleaved with meaningful elements of the larger story. The fact that Russian women really did serve in combat roles allows a more seamless, or at least, less jarring, combination of human-interest with historical events in the narrative.
All in all, one of the better war movies I have seen, Enemy At the Gates strikes a credible balance between the horrific reality of the subject matter and creating an engaging, well-made, and eminently watchable movie.