Should be taught in film class.

Rating: 9/10 (18 August 2003)

Imagine the pitch:
A game of cat-and-mouse = great! A game of cat-and-mouse between two snipers = even better! Make it a true story = whoa! Make it a war story = WHOA! Shoot it on rarely seen actual locations = hubba hubba! Cast it with an international A-list = excellent! Include perennial Academy-Award nominee Ed Harris = superb! Make the antagonist a Nazi = should be no problem for an audience to want to see HIS comeuppance!
And now ... make the protagonists a Communist sniper and a Communist propaganda officer (Law and Fiennes, respectively)!
This is exactly the task that director Jean-Jacques Annaud faced with ENEMY AT THE GATES. How does one make a movie where the GOOD guys work for Stalin, one of the most hideous human beings ever to walk the earth?
Answer: Start with the script. By making the decision to give Mr. Fiennes and Mr. Law's characters dimensionality through love and friendships, the script is creating characters the audience can relate to. By the simple act of withholding the same information about Mr. Harris' Nazi, the script makes him a more dangerous antagonist who is already cold hearted and cunning (he uses a child to his advantage in a much more effective way than your standard movie villain). Throw in a woman who is unwilling to sit on the sidelines as war threatens to determine her fate (Weisz), and you have four compelling characters to lead your story.
Next comes casting. Casting an actor that the audience inherently has come to trust over the years - Ed Harris - as a Nazi sniper antagonist, adds dimension to the film. All of a sudden, the audience is asked to take sides, not merely shoved one way or the other.
Next comes the setting. By choosing to set the film in a place that is cold, unforgiving, and unrelenting on its best days (not to mention war) adds necessary tension and desperation. Then throw in utterly graphic and realistic war violence. Take all this and wrap it around a true story and you have a combination that should make an audience's stomach tie itself in to knots.
Finally, hire a director. Who better for this hard-to-sell story than a man who has made a career out of untellable stories such as THE BEAR and QUEST FOR FIRE?
Finally, then ... an undeservingly overlooked film that is certainly better than most everything else on the shelves of your local video store.