Sort of good.

Rating: 7/10 (15 April 2001)

The last war movie I saw was `Saving Private Ryan' and although it was an excellent movie I wasn't sure if I wanted to see another one. For anyone who has seen a war movie, you have to admit that they can be a bit depressing, especially the more real they are. Enemy at the Gates is based on a real person, which means that a certain amount of the events are real or based on similar events. And knowing this, some of the things I saw definitely fell within the emotional category of depressing.
Enemy at the Gates is based on the life of Vassili Zaitsev (Jude Law), a young Russian soldier in the sniper division. The movie focuses on Vassili's time in the war and his rise to heroism as Russian papers detail his heroic feats as a special divisions sniper. As the war progresses and as Vassili gains notoriety, he begins to draw the attention of the German high command. To put a stop to this, the Germans send in their top sniper, Major Koenig (Ed Harris) to deal with Vassili.
I'm not usually a stickler about movie consistencies but there were some that were quite noticeable. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed this movie but the story was about the Germans trying to overtake Stalingrad so the characters are all either German or Russian. Hence it reasons to believe that there should be German and Russian accents. I don't really mind if the accents are off as long as the attempt was made to be somewhat authentic but instead, most of the characters either had British or American accents and when watching the movie, I had a hard time getting really into it. In addition to this, there was one point where we see Vassili writing a letter to some of his supporters, which in itself is fine but we see him being told how to spell a word by Joseph Fiennes character, Commander Danilov and he spells out the word in English. Maybe I'm getting picky but this seemed quite obvious and odd to me in the context of the scene and the overall movie. Little things like these took away from the authenticity of the movie and overall enjoyment level. On another note, some of the dialogue was a bit cliché ridden and in some situations seemed to be added for drama and Hollywood sake.
The acting was quite well done, especially Ed Harris's character. The one knock I have (not against him but the direction of his character) is that the end scene with Commander Koenig and the little boy, Sasha, seemed completely out of line with the character we're given up to that point. But maybe that was the point the director was trying to make. I quite enjoyed Jude Law's performance. I haven't seen many of his films but I enjoyed this one. I really enjoyed the sniper scenes. Unlike many war movies where directors feel that it's necessary to have lots of movement and action (which is a natural part of war), I really did like the sniper scenes where there was little movement. We're still able to feel the tension that these men feel and the subtleties of being a sniper.
Overall, I did like the movie but it could have been better if they paid a bit more attention to the things I mentioned above. But, like I said, maybe I'm just being picky. I'm just a guy who watches a lot of movies so what do I know.