More educational than entertaining

Rating: 6/10 (29 June 2006)

The pluses of "Enemy at the Gates" much outweigh the minuses. In all, the movie was an effective display of brutality in war, and of some of the nonsense that goes on not only in war, but in the world, that leads to bloodshed. Often what makes a film is great acting from all the minor characters. In this movie, the minor characters outshine the stars in every instance. I think of it more a warning than a spoiler to state that Perlman, whose character the viewer knows will die, is killed almost as soon as he is introduced. People expecting to see more from him should expect to see what amounts to a large cameo instead. However, he does dominate while on screen, and does have the major line of the movie, about the sickle and the hammer. The three Russian leads are drawn with some compassion and humanity, but they don't stir a lot of interest, and the actors playing these roles are the worst at enunciating and expressing their words. You basically have to guess at what they are saying, and that is unforgivable. It is more important to convey the message and characters than to simply speak with thick accents. Indeed, it is Sacha and his mother who dominate the story, although they don't appear that much. And it is the quest of the mother in the end that draws the viewer instead of the quest of the lead character. Gabriel Thomson gives an incredible performance as the tyke, Sacha, and Eva Mattes is downplayed as the mother, but does admirably in her small screen time. The plot is probably one of the weak points here. Its hard to make excitement out of "cat and mouse", and the story takes heavy theatrical license. The director makes the mistake of showing whole scale carnage that can't be escaped early in the film, yet tries to persuade the viewer to believe the lead character and the German sniper can only be killed by each other. Of course, younger viewers will appreciate the larger than life characters and accept this, but mature viewers will be puzzled by the directing, which means they're paying more attention to the method than the story, a bad sign for an entertainer. Still, there are more truths than fallacies to the story, and it is enlightening. The directing and film editing look splotched. Sacha, for example, just magically appears in the presence of the German sniper. There are other examples. But the director redeems himself overall. The last sequence involving Ed Harris and Gabriel Thomson is extremely effective. Looks more like a classroom educational film with marginal entertainment value than a blockbuster, but overall a film with more pluses than minuses.