My plot review of this movie

Rating: Null/10 (17 April 2001)

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** Enemy at the Gates follows very realistic plot with a number of actual events and only add a couple of there own for effect. The movie starts out showing the main sniper, Sgt. Vassili Zaitsev, as a little kid hunting with his grandfather. The movie then jumps into the war where Vassili and all the other Russian soldiers are heading into Leningrad to fight off the advancing Germans. This is where he encounters his first dilemma. When he arrives they get slaughtered at every turn and from both sides. He has to choose whether to advance and be killed by German bullets, or to retreat and be shot by his own people. Vassili ends up being found by a reporter who discovers how good of a shot he is when he takes out a group of enemies in there temporary base.
The movie takes off from there, Vassili is promoted to the sniper division and the reporter, Danilov, uses him as an encouragement to the Russian army by printing of Vassili's kills. The Germans catch on to Vassili's tactics and they send out their best sniper, Major Erwin Konings, to stop the problem.
The fighting goes back and forth with close calls on either side but the plot takes a quick turn to a "love story" between Vassili and Tania. Here on in, Vassili changes and fights for Tania, not the army.
The suspense comes to a climax when Vassili and Danilov finally meet and Vassili has to decide whether or not to shoot him. There is the long climactic pause and then, BANG, Vassili pulls the trigger and kills Danilov. After that he goes out to find Tania at the hospital and even though the hospital doesn't have any record of her there, he manages to beat all odds and he sees her across the room.
The ending of this movie is definitely a classic example of a "happy ending". It follows all of the guidelines, such as: the protagonist solves his problem by defeating the villain and getting the girl then living happily ever after. In my opinion it was a very good movie until the end where the plot took a dive into the classic cheesy ending.