An unsatisfactory war film.

Rating: Null/10 (5 May 2003)

** out of ****
Based on surface look alone, Enemy at the Gates is an impressive production with excellent visuals and a high-caliber cast and crew. Unfortunately, despite the hefty pricetag and technical merit, the film is mostly a mediocre accomplishment, and really, almost all the main cast and crew are at fault.
Gates does begin in a very promising fashion. After the flashback pre-credits opening scene, we're thrust into the mayhem of the battle of Stalingrad, and in this seven-minute setpiece, director Jean-Jacques Annaud captures the chaos, the terror, and the outright horror of the fighting, stumbling only when he decides to let James Horner's score drown out every other sound (why is it directors these days feel the need to employ this method?) (worse yet, Horner's score in this scene sounds far too similar to John Williams' work in Schindler's List). From there, the film narrows its focus to two central characters, the sniper Vassili Zaitsev (Jude Law) and his opponent, Major Konig (Ed Harris). The rest of the film is a game of cat-and-mouse, as well as a tacked on love story that occasionally plays in between the sniper sequences.
As far as war films go, Enemy at the Gates fails to deliver. Once again, another film that seems to promise to show the graphic horrors and epic scale of the battle of Stalingrad merely uses it as a backdrop (the other film would be Stalingrad). True, the sniper hunts are fairly riveting in a visceral manner, but never truly engaging because you don't feel for the protagonist. This is mostly the script's fault, which doesn't give Jude Law the opportunity to develop into a full-fledged, three-dimensional character. All we really learn about this guy is his lack of self-confidence, and even though he might be scared, the suspense is confined to a minimum because the outcome of the situation is never in doubt.
Ed Harris, unsurprisingly, fares much better as the villain of the picture. Actually, despite playing the obvious bad guy, he creates a rather complex character who isn't as unfeeling and inhumane as he may initially seem. Unfortunately, director Annaud must have been afraid we would have sympathized with him too much so he turns him into a typical monster by the end, definitely the worst move the film makes.
The love story honestly isn't of much interest. Law and Rachel Weisz have zero romantic chemistry and every scene that focuses on these two is a complete bore. Joseph Fiennes is on hand to be the third wheel of this supposed love triangle, but nobody else in the film seems to want him around, so why bother?
Gates is marred by all sorts of little problems. The editing and pacing is off; for instance, one scene features a Russian sniper briefly leaving his post, then the next, he's suddenly in German hands. We never see him get caught, we're just told so. The sudden move from one place to another occurs often among the characters; it's rather jarring and not necessarily believable considering the snipers that are lying in wait to pick off trespassers.
The film never works as an anti-war stance, in spite of the grim tone and the bloody violence, it fails as a romance, and as a game of cat-and-mouse, you never feel the stakes to be as high as they should and you find yourself rooting for the villain because he feels more human and believable (for the majority of the running time, at least) than our so-called hero. For all the elements I listed above, you can find more effective films that employ them with more precision and entertainment value. Enemy at the Gates is really just a forgettable war film.