Kind of disappointed

Rating: 6/10 (5 September 2005)

While certainly the movie had quite a lot of promise, I have to say that I was a tad bit disappointed by the plot. The entire movie just seems to consist of cobbled-together pieces from the book "Enemy at the Gates" by William Craig. While the later picture of that title concentrated on just one episode of the book, this movie tries to cram it ALL in. Basically every scene is taken from the book and as I had read it prior to watching the film, I was quite disappointed. There certainly was enough tragedy in this, one of the bloodiest battles of WW2, without having to try to make the protagonists live through EVERY single publicised part of it. To me, it was simply overkill. Perhaps if I had not known the book beforehand (I have a copy of the original, not the reedition for the Jude Law flic and read it before seeing either film), I would have appreciated the movie more. Concentrating on one facet of the struggle (as the later "Enemy at the Gates" did) might have made me feel more for the characters instead of thinking "hey, I know this from somewhere" all the time as I actually did with this one, unfortunately. To me, "Die Bruecke" and "Das Boot" still rank supreme, as far as German efforts to portray the Second World War are concerned. Those movies actually made me feel for the characters and wish that a situation such as they were in would never occur again.