Perfect Downward Spiral To Utter Narrative Tedium

Rating: 4/10 (7 June 2006)

I have seen many bad war movies in my time, but rarely have I seen a perfect bad war movie. Picture an inverted pyramid, balanced on a pinpoint. The movie begins with enormous excitement and gripping realism, as Soviet Russia reels under impact of the German juggernaut. The time, summer of 1942. The opening five minutes of the film combine bombing, infantry assault, armored columns, to create a relentless sense of superior German firepower. The end is near, and yet the Russians are still desperately fighting back. Jude Law first makes his entrance as a conscript who has only five bullets, and who must kill five German soldiers in a matter of seconds to survive. BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! And that's about it. Once the young sniper has been "discovered" and equipped properly, each battle scene has less and less power. The movie starts at a run, dwindles to a walk, and finishes at a crawl. It is a perfect reverse pyramid -- starting breathless and ending lifeless.
Unlike other reviewers,however, I do not feel that what killed this movie was the forced romantic situations. Rachel Weisz was both stunning and effectively torn as a Russian girl who goes from bedraggled front line fighter to crisp and polished headquarters clerk. Her obvious courage and devotion to the sniper hero is balanced by a quite human need to survive. With just a slump of her shoulders or a half-conscious glance at a cot in a quiet corner, Rachel Weisz shows the aching weariness and exhaustion of a young woman forced into the most wracking labor. Always expressive as an actress, she uses her large dark eyes and full, expressive mouth to depict weariness and despair as well as determination. Her transfer to the rear comes as a shock, and she tries to protest, but after weeks of hunger, sleeplessness and dirt she is almost hypnotically drawn to the promise of a hot bath and a good night's sleep. Her love for the hero is always convincing, but it does not uproot her more basic survival needs, and this is a poignant note of realism in a rather unrealistic film.