Shoot the casting director first...

Rating: 1/10 (10 March 2007)

So fluffy cuddly Jude Law is cast in the role of a ruthless Soviet sniper - yeah right, except you hardly get the chance to see him pull a trigger - no doubt because the producers felt that to see him shooting people would make him less lovable. Rachel Weisz appears as the love interest, with a smudge of dirt above one eyebrow to show how much she has suffered as a Red army soldier - the pair of them look like they belong at an English garden party rather than the siege of Stalingrad. There is no insight into Law's character except for some contrived flashbacks of him shooting a wolf with his granddad and no explanation of how he developed into a sharp- shooter. Even the action scenes are badly directed with little or no tension.
Miscast, misdirected and poorly scripted, it left me rooting for the Nazi sniper just to put an end to this whole sorry farrago as he gives the only credible performance in the whole movie. This film doesn't even begin to tell the true story of Stanlingrad or the heroic resistance of the Russian people against Fascism. As for the tacked-on happy ending, this just reveals the whole enterprise for the cynical load of Hollywood dross that it is.