Tried to be too much.

Rating: 7/10 (27 August 2001)

This wasn't a bad movie. I enjoyed much of it. I thought it captured some of war's grit and horror and the performances by Jude Law and Ed Harris were good. Bob Hoskins was great. I thought Rachel Weisz was also good but the rather sappy love story placed inside of this movie slowed the action and disrupted the flow. The story for me was about the duel between the two snipers. The love interest could have been introduced and used as in a minor way, such as giving Vassili a reason to want to live, but it took up too much of the screen time thus confusing the main point of the movie. Was it a war movie or a love story? It tried to be both and failed to gel into a whole movie. Still it was worth watching. War movie fans will have to suffer through the sap while love story fans have to endure the gore.