Quite entertaining...

Rating: Null/10 (20 March 2001)

even though there was some added Hollywood fluff. That's the only explanation for the love triangle that develops in the midst of the battle at Stalingrad. However, like I said, I liked the movie anyway.
First, I want to take a lot of other reviewers to task for picking on the fact that most of the actors had English accents. I find it ludicrous that some would point to that as an issue of realism that the characters didn't sound Russian, but they would ignore the fact that they were speaking english in the first place. I would think for the level of realism that these folks would seem to expect, that the film would have been made entirely in Russian and shown with english subtitles. And I certainly don't remember anyone pointing out the same problem when Sean Connery portrayed the Russian submarine commander in Hunt For Red October.
Personally, I found a way to forgive the film makers for going for a little star power with Hoskins, Weisz, and Ed Harris. And I would have found it much more annoying had they gone for the accents and one of them was simply terrible at it.
Moving on, this film is well acted and well shot. Never, for one second, do you get the idea that you are not looking at the ruins of Stalingrad in the midst of this battle. You see the up-close horrors of war with a few ideas thrown in that I've not seen anywhere else. The drama of Russian sniper Vassily Zaitsev pitted against the Nazi sniper Major Koenig was riveting. The romance was tolerable, even though not really believable under those circumstances. But that is not to say that it wasn't well portrayed. But it would seem that it was just something added to the story to speak to a certain audience to give the film a little more mainstream appeal.
All in all, well worth the time and money. 4 of 5 stars...