See war from a different perspective

Rating: 8/10 (20 March 2001)

A darn good war movie, drawing heavily from the "realism" school of battle scene filming that has become the standard in the past several years. Very good performances by Jude Law and Ed Harris anchor the film, while the rest of the solid cast does everything expected of them. I especially liked Bob Hoskins's performance as an overbearing, foul-mouthed, and fully believable Nikita Krushchev.
Historically speaking, don't see this film as a replacement for your World War II textbooks. As one historian once wrote: "It is fiction, based on a grain of truth." However if you look hard enough, there are also accurate insights on the nature of the war. The overwhelming manpower of the Red Army versus the mechanical superiority of the German Army is highlighted on several occasions. Also nicely shown were the propaganda battles that were being waged simultaneously to the bloody fighting in the streets. Remember that Vassily Zaitsev was real, almost everything else is fiction or at best a guess.
There is a romance in the movie, and it too is surprisingly well done. Normally I find attempts to weave a genuine love story into war movies a useless endeavor. In this case, because the romantic story line remained understated in terms of total screen time, I thought it delivered nicely. It allows us the human side of war and gives us someone to root for.
Finally, the problems with the movie. First and foremost, there is a time to wax poetic about the nature of man's choices of governmental theory, and there are times to shut up and hope you don't get shot. Most of the battle for Stalingrad I'd think would fall into the latter category. In short, there are scenes that could have been cut. With a running time of around 2 hours and 15 minutes, this film would have worked just fine at 2 hours. Secondly, I don't mind a disparity in accents, but please don't have the background extra characters singing in Russian or yelling in German when the main characters are speaking English. It only serves to remind me that almost everyone is technically speaking the wrong language, English.
All in all though, I recommend this movie. Get inside the head of a sniper for a few hours, and see war from a different perspective.