One town stands between the enemy and total victory

Rating: Null/10 (19 March 2001)

**SPOILERS** An evil aggressor swarms over Europe, only one town stands between them and total victory. A hero is needed, someone to inspire the defending army to superhuman efforts. But the aggressor has other ideas and sends in a crack shot to take out the hero. Well, that describes the first film I saw this weekend - The Messenger (the story of Jean d'Arc) and could equally be applied to Stalingrad.
Both The Messenger and Stalingrad have been heavily criticized. They don't stick to the historical facts, the goodies (the Russians) don't have American accents, the baddies (the Germans) don't have English accents.
Well lets start with those accents. It seems that American audiences have major difficulties understanding anything non-American so allow me to elaborate a bit. Krushchev and Zaitsev, being from the proletariat, have working class English accents. Danilov and Tania, being educated, have middle class accents. Simple. Seeing as the film is an English language movie this is at least consistent.
As with SPR the first 20 minutes is a horrific battle scene where young Russians are pulled off a train, shipped across the Volga under heavy artillery and Stukka attacks and thrust straight into battle with 1 gun between 2. But it is the later scenes that are more horrific. You get to study the faces of the victims before they are cruelly dispatched by the sniper.
There are a number of stories in this movie, each of which is engaging. There is the love triangle between Danilov, Tania and Zaitsev. Rachel Weiss natural beauty shines through the dirt plastered to her face and body - she obviously got a taste for dirt after Land Girls. The duel between Zaitsev and Koenig lasts the whole movie in a number of nail bighting set-pieces. Zaitsev is initially the hunted wolf but curbs his impatience to become the hunter.
The Danilov story is important. Despite a pleasant exterior this character is never really likeable. In the denouement he explains that he wanted to build a just and equal society but discovered that there is always something to be coveted in others.
The ending is a bit schmaltzy and could have been dropped, but it is still infinitely better than the vomit inducing SPR. The battle scenes are frightening realistic although the cinematography is not on the same 'verity' level as The Messenger.