Enemy at the Gates
LikeSaving Private Ryan,Enemy at the Gatesopens with a  pivotal event of World War II--the German invasion of  Stalingrad--re-created in epic scale, as ill-trained Russian soldiers  face German attack or punitive execution if they flee from the enemy's  advance. Director Jean-Jacques Annaud captures this madness with urgent  authenticity, creating a massive context for a more intimate battle  waged amid the city's ruins. Embellished from its basis in fact, the  story shifts to an intense cat-and-mouse game between a Russian shepherd  raised to iconic fame and a German marksman whose skill is unmatched in  its lethal precision. Vassily Zaitzev (Jude Law) has been sniping Nazis  one bullet at a time, while the German Major Konig (Ed Harris) has been  assigned to kill Vassily and spare Hitler from further embarrassment.There's love in war as Vassily connects with a woman soldier (Rachel  Weisz), but she is also loved by Danilov (Joseph Fiennes), the Soviet  officer who promotes his friend Vassily as Russia's much-needed hero.  This romantic rivalry lends marginal interest to the central plot, but  it's not enough to make this a classic war film. Instead it's a taut,  well-made suspense thriller isolated within an epic battle, and although  Annaud and cowriter Alain Godard (drawing from William Craig's book and  David L. Robbins's novelThe War of the Rats) fail to connect  the parallel plots with any lasting impact, the production is never less  than impressive. Highly conventional but handled with intelligence and  superior craftsmanship, this is warfare as strategic entertainment,  without compromising warfare as a manmade hell on Earth.--Jeff Shannon