A Great WWII Movie

Rating: 9/10 (20 March 2001)

Note to my fellow history buffs: No movie set during an historical event is 100% accurate, no matter how good it is. Not Saving Private Ryan, not Glory, not Apollo 13, not Gettysburg, not Titanic. Stuff gets condensed, stuff gets left out and some stuff is added on in the interests of drama. Once you can deal with this, you'll not only have a much better time at the movies, you'll also be less likely to annoy the people you go to the movies with. That and you get to have the fun of e-mailing all the little goofs in to IMDB.
You know a movie has to be good when the biggest gripes people have about it are the accents. Yes, all the major Russians seemed to have studied at Oxford, and an accent coach would have been nice. And yes, in the many scenes when it's sniper vs. sniper, the huge Russian and German armies seemed to have disappeared completely. Other then that, there was very little to groan about in this movie. Ed Harris had a powerful screen presence, and the major Russian characters played by Jude Law, Joeseph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz played well off each other, even without the benefit of Russian accents.
The story is an excellent balance of excitement and suspense. There is an explosive, in-your-face action battle scene which the only half armed Red army gets clobbered in turn by German Stukas, tanks, and machine guns, and tense, uptight sequences where the two expert snipers stalk each other.

I'll recommend this for any WWII fan, suspense movie fan, Harris/ Law/ J.Fiennes/ Weisz fan and any movie historian who's starting to get the feeling that Hollywood has been giving a just little too much credit to the US contribution in WWII recently (U-571, Saving Private Ryan). Enemy is a welcome movie that gives the sufferings and the heroism of the Soviets their due.