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| Enemy At The Gates UK Release Date: 16/3/01 Certificate: 15 Official Website Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud Producers: Jean-Jacques Annaud & John D. Schofield Screenplay: Alain Goddard & Jean-Jacques Annaud |
| Enemy At The Gates is reported to be the most expensive European movie ever made. But don't worry, it's not a pretentious black-and-white French subtitled two-hour yawn-fest. Instead it's an epic war movie on the scale of Saving Private Ryan. It's 1942, and Continental Europe is letting the Germans walk all over it. But when they reach Stalingrad, the city which bears their leader's name, the |
| Russians decide that enough is enough. Their propaganda officers decide to create a hero, someone who will inspire the people and generate hope of victory. Cockney pretty-boy Jude Law grows some stubble and muddies his girly features to play Vassili Zaitsev. Taught how to shoot by his poacher Grandfather, Vassili is a sniper with some skill, but who cannot live up to the legend created around him. Particularly not when the Germans' response to their Soviet foes' propaganda campaign is to send their best sniper to take him out. Unlike traditional films, where Russians and Germans speak English, but with appropriate accents, the actors here all use their own voices for their characters. This takes a little getting used to at first, with Law sounding like a regular in the Queen Vic, while Jospeh Fiennes (as Political Officer Danilov) and Rachel Weisz (Tania Chernova, the other corner of the love-triangle) have rather more refined English accents. American Ed Harris plays Major Konig, the German sharp-shooter sent after Vassili. The large-scale battle scenes are both exhilerating and horrific; highlighting both the futility of the Russian defence against the better-armed Germans, and the ruthlessness of the Russian Commanders. Even more impressive, though, is the tension of the duel between Vassili and Konig. This is the highlight of the movie, despite the inevitable, and far less interesting, love-story, and Law's underplaying his scenes just a bit too much. When his life is in danger, he just looks mildly pissed off. This is a very entertaining movie. If Europe can make a few more like this, the strike that threatens to close down Hollywood later this year won't matter that much. 8/10. |
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