If we lose the city the entire nation will collapse

Rating: 7/10 (1 September 2006)

(There are some Spoilers) True story of a Russian shepherd boy who's biggest ambition in life was to become a foreman, in a Soviet industrial factory, instead ending up becoming a Hero of the Soviet Union by picking off almost 150 German troops with his trusty snipers rifle in the battle scared factory district during the battle of Stalingrad.
With the German advance steamrolling into the USSR in the spring and summer of 1942 by early September the only obstacle that stood in the way of a Nazi victory in Russia, and eventually winning the Second World War altogether, was the highly industrial city on the River Volga ironically named after the then dictator, Joseph Stalin, of the Soviet Union Stalingrad.
The German superiority in armor and air-power was counterbalanced not only by the Red Army's brutal tactics against their own troops killing many Russian soldiers, by rearguard NKVD execution squads, who tried to surrender to the German forces or retreat from the front-lines. Also the street fighting skills of Gen. Chikov's 62nd Army that did the brunt of the fighting and dying in the defense of the city.
Early in the fighting young Red Army private Vassili Zaitsev, Jude Law, trapped in no-mans land picked off five German soldiers in ten minutes to the admiration of his fellow, and disabled, Red Army comrade Danilov, Joseph Flennes. Danilov get's this idea of lifting the Red Army's sagging moral in the fighting by making Vassili a national hero in publishing his sniping exploits in the Red Army's newspaper. Keeping a daily score of his kills on the front page.
The Soviet political commissar of Stalingrad Nikita Krushchev, Bob Hoskins, is more then delighted with both Danilov idea and Vassili's exploits promoting both of them. Danilov to a commissar post and Vassili to the head of an elite Soviet sniper company. As Vassili's daily kills raise the Red Army's hopes and moral in Stalingrad the German's get their ace sniper Major Konig, Ed Harris, to get into a killing contest with Vassili. With the eventual winner being the one who knocks off the opposing champion, Vassili or Konig, first.
The great battle scenes in the movie are offset by a fictitious and schmaltzy love triangle between the two friends Vassili and Danilov with pretty Jewish Red Army woman soldier Tani Chernova, Rachel Weisz. There's also a underlying racial element in this tri-love affair with Danilov who's himself Jewish resenting that his good friend and army comrade Vassili, who saved his life, having an affair with a Jewish woman.
Konig getting to Stalingrad for the big showdown starts to pick off Red Army soldiers with the same ease and skill as Vassili does against the Germans. It's only a matter of time before the two square off against each other but the fact that now Tani is the mix things get a lot more complicated. Danilov want's to have Tani transfered away from the front not only to keep her from getting killed but away from her lover Vassili. This underhanded action on Danilov's part leads the former Ural shepherd boy to lose his concentration and almost get picked off by the far less worried, about his love life, Major Konig.
There's also little 8 year old Sacha Filipov, Gabriel Thomson, who's spying for the Red Army in order to get important information on Major Konigs whereabouts so that his hero Vassili can get the drop on him. Major Konig who pays off little Sacha with bars of chocolates and hunks of bacon, what a weird combination, for his services knows what he's really up to, a double-agent for the Russians. Major Konig gives Sacha a chance to escape but thinking that the German Major is being fooled by his charade Sacha tragically ends up being captured and hanged by a very reluctant but iron-Prussian willed Konig.
With the city looking like it's on the verge of falling to the Germans the remaining population is evacuated across the Volga which includes Sacha's mother, and Tina good friend, Mrs. Filipou ,Eva Matters. Mrs. Filipou is told by Danilov that her son deserted to the other side to keep her from knowing the truth that he was executed by the Nazis. During the evacuation Tina gets hit by a German artillery shell and, being so badly wounded, is then thought to have been killed. This leads Danilov ,in a last gesture of friendship, towards Vassili,to exposed himself getting hit right between the eyes by Konig which leads him to come out in the open and into the gun-sight of Vassili Zaitsev's snipers rifle. it's later revealed that Tina survived her wounds making Danilov act of self-sacrifice even more telling that it already was.
P.S Vassili Zaitsev's career as a Red Army sniper came to a sudden end in early 1943 when he was badly injured by a German land mine. Vassili lost what's the most important attribute that a sniper needs to do his deadly work his sight. Being awarded Hero of the Soviet Union by Comrade Stalin Vassili is looked upon today some 60 years after WWII as one of the greatest fighting men in Russian, Soviet or otherwise, history. Vassili's snipers rifle is on display in the Stalingrad War Museum in Volgagrad named after the river that it's on not the WWII Soviet dictator who was responsible, in safe and far off Moscow, for it's heroic defense.