Just another happy ending

Rating: Null/10 (13 March 2001)

Enemy at the Gates is a visually striking WW2 film, nothing more. The setting is Stalingrad, but every Russian and German sounds like they were deported from the UK. Every single character is ugly except for our wonderful leads (Law, Fiennes, Harris and Weisz) who seems to have fallen from heaven onto the battle field. The story starts out strong, but as usual, it falls short of accomplishing anything. The feeling that you get when you leave the theater is that they reeled you in with a breathtaking first half and the only thing that keeps you in your seat until the end is taking bets as to which of the characters will get a bullet through the eye and which ones will walk into the sunset to live happily ever after. It really is a shame that such talented actors were given such a typical script... but I may be wrong in my assessment because I don't know the true life story of the characters. Maybe the film is exactly what happened, in which case bravo!