A good but not great movie about a seldom seen side of WWII

Rating: 8/10 (7 February 2005)

Well, what can I say. Not often before have I been both so impressed and so disappointed by a movie at the same time. What "Enemy at the Gates" does well, it does extremely well. But I can't help but feel that it could have been a whole lot better.
First, the good things: first of all, there's the excellent opening sequence which shows thousands of Soviet soldiers being ferried across the river towards the battle of Stalingrad. They're being shelled by artillery, shot at by Stuka dive bombers, and executed by their own officers if they try to flee. The utter chaos and desperateness of these early scenes rivals those of "Saving Private Ryan's" Normandy beach landing. Very well done indeed.
The rest of the movie also features some enormously impressive and very tense sniper duels between the Russian hero and his German antagonist. These scenes are easily among the most nail-bitingly suspenseful I've ever seen.
For the most part, "Enemy at the Gates" is also a very well-made movie. The acting is great (especially by Ed Harris), everything looks very authentic, and the ruins of Stalingrad look very impressive. There are some fairly fake CGI airplanes in a couple of scenes, but that's about the only technical flaw I can think of.
What could have been a lot better though is the story. I understand the need to take some liberties with reality in order to make for a more interesting narrative, but the story here feels rather contrived, relying of a lot of coincidences. The ending in particular is a let-down. After so many good scenes, it feels like a huge anti-climax.
Also of note is the awkward love story between the hero and a female Russian soldier. It feels out of place, it's very clichéd, and it actually takes up way too much time that could have been better spent on either real character development or more sniper duels.
All in all, it's still a very suspenseful and impressive movie, but I can't help but feel that with a bit more work on the story it could have been so much more.
**** out of *****