Glaring problem makes for difficult enjoyment

Rating: 4/10 (22 January 2007)

You know what, aside from a few bad clichés and a couple poorly acted scenes the general story-line of this movie would have been great, save for one problem. The real trouble is that this problem isn't just a little problem but a huge one. How am I to take any part of this movie seriously, or to take any comment that stresses the director's eye for authenticity seriously, if the entire Russian army is British???!!! A movie like this would have done well to have proper language speakers and subtitles, but if the filmmakers feel they have to pander down to a stupider, less forgiving audience then they could have at least gotten the actors to speak English with Russian accents, maybe even some Russian extras... You know what, even if the director felt that bad accents might mar the quality of the performances, fine, have them all speak in British accents, but stay consistent! All the Russians are British, except Ron Pearlman, who is an American doing a British accent, playing a Russian (!!!). Then the first German voice we hear is speaking English with a German accent, but then after that, all the Germans are British,except for Ed Harris who keeps his American accent (too tough for ya huh buddy?). Then some German extras speak German (only some), the Russian musicians sing in Russian, and, the piece de la resistance, the Germans and the Russians can communicate with each other whenever they please (Ed Harris to the little boy who I have trouble believing is fluent in German and a couple other times as well), yet they need translators in the Russian army to decipher German messages... huh? no kidding?... It's unavoidable really, the mess that this whole language thing produces makes it hard to take any scene in this film seriously. I don't even want to get started on how much it ticks me off that Hollywood loves representing every other language on the planet with British actors (it's different, but everyone can still understand it without using any part of their brains). Terrible, just plain terrible. I bet the real Vasilii Zaitsev is rolling over in his grave.