'Enemy' knocks at greatness, no one answers

If hell on Earth had a capital city, it would have to be Stalingrad circa 1942. The seven-month battle for the city on the Volga proved to be the largest—and perhaps the most costly—military struggle in the history of mankind. Completely encircled by the Soviets, the German Sixth Army finally surrendered in January of 1943 after months of starvation. Ninety-one thousand Axis troops were left of the 330,000 that had invaded. Of those, only 6,000 ever made it home. Close to 500,000 Russian soldiers died defending the city, which was reduced to a maze of rubble and corpses.

COURTESY PARAMOUNT PICTURES Jude Law, wearing a peppy sniper's cap ($500, Brooks Brothers), army jacket ($900, DKNY), and a squint that can only say, 'I'm conflicted.'

Somewhere between the Eastern Front and Hollywood, the profound tragedy of the Battle of Stalingrad has become a story about heroics and love. Enemy at the Gates, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, tells the (supposedly true) story of a duel amidst the rubble between Russian sniper Vassily Zaitsev (Jude Law) and a Nazi master sniper (Ed Harris). Harris has been sent all the way from Berlin to kill Zaitsev and end his demoralizing assasination campaign, as well as quash a healthy source of propaganda for the Soviet leadership.

While entertaining and visually stunning, the film never manages to take advantage of the unique aspects of its subject matter—the hellish madness of literally living for months in the middle of a battlefield, the tense life or death struggle of a sniper duel. Instead of developing these themes, Enemy wastes time and energy unfolding a banal love triangle between Zaitsev, Danilov (Joseph Fiennes), the Soviet official who turns Zaitsev into a national hero, and Tania (Rachel Weicz), a Russian militia fighter determined to join Zaitsev's sniper team. There is little tension or honest emotion in this, and so much screen time is wasted on it that the more interesting aspects of the story are never given a chance to develop.

Enemy at the Gates opens in spectacular fashion, borrowing a few tricks from the Saving Private Ryan school of war movies—we see Zaitsev and other young Soviet troops make an amphibious landing on the banks of the Volga amid a brilliant and horrifying tapestry of carnage. Enemy does a good job early on of showing how the soldiers of the Red Army were trapped under the yoke of two tyrannies, one the invader's, the other their own. As the ill-equipped Russians retreat from the overwhelming German forces in fear, they are gunned down by their own officers for their cowardice. The hollow report of machine-gun fire is center stage as the soundtrack fades away, with Russian after Russian falling dead at the hands of their fellow countrymen. We get the sense that these soldiers are not fighting for a cause—they are helpless pawns at the mercy of insane puppet masters thousands of miles away. Unfortunately, this concept is not developed any further, and one of the great ironies of war (especially a war between two sadistic dictators) is not allowed to flourish beyond the opening battle sequence.

Like many historical "epics" made in the age of computer generation, this film lacks atmosphere. We get a few CGI-rendered vistas of the shattered city, but it is clear that the actual sets for this film could not have been very large. There is little sense of a spatial relationship between one building and another, something unforgivable in a film that is supposed to be about the art of sniping, in which success and failure is measured in inches. Furthermore, in a battle where the front lines shifted block by block, the viewer is given no idea of where Zaitsev's living quarters are in relation to the fighting, or to his own sniper positions. All of this detracts from the film's sense of realism, and thus its tension.

Harris as Major Koenig is the film's only perfect casting fit, his natural stoicism nicely complementing the cold, calculating nature of a sharpshooter. He revels in the sparse dialogue he is given. Law doesn't fare quite as well, his British accent a bit more than distracting in his portrayal of a Russian peasant. Also, his character suffers from Luke Skywalker syndrome: a natural-born hero too pretty and innocent to be as much of a badass as the story's events require him to be. One can imagine Harris sitting in the bitter cold for hours, covered in shit, gazing through his scope for the perfect opportunity to shoot a hole in the head of an unsuspecting soldier without even blinking. Law, one thinks, would eventually get tired, go home, and call his mum.

The actual confrontations between Zaitsev and Koenig are by far the best parts of the film, though even these centerpiece scenes feel a little tepid. Annaud should have taken his cue from the novel War of the Rats by David Robbins, a fictionalized account of the same story with much more interesting and creative sniper confrontations. The film time wasted in Annaud's silly love triangle would have been better spent on the complexities of the sniper's duel—the techniques, the tricks, and the fatal errors. As it is, the sniper scenes are tense, but somewhat short of riveting.

All told, Enemy at the Gates is an enjoyable yet forgettable movie experience. In more capable hands, the story of the mythic duel between Zaitsev and Koenig could have produced one of the best war movies in years. As it stands, this film hints at greatness, but never really comes close to achieving it.

Back to A&E...