“Enemy at the Gates” – R – New This Week to Video/DVD
Sometimes something very small can make the closest of friends enemies.
The year is 1942 and Hitler’s Nazi Germany are invading the town of Stalingrad. This is during WWII and a sniper, Vassili (Jude Law) is befriended by a Commissar, Danilov (Joseph Fiennes). Danilov writes and publishes the armed forces newspaper. After seeing how well Vassili can shoot at the enemy, he starts writing about it in the paper. He is trying to raise the spirits of the people of Stalingrad. It works. The people are given a new hope that they might actually win this battle against the Germans.
The Germans are also aware of the newspaper articles and they send in their best sniper, Erwin Konig (Ed Harris) to take out Stalingrad’s best defense.
Tania (Rachel Weisz) is a sergeant in Staligrad’s army. Danilov has feelings for her, but she can’t keep her eyes off of the new sniper. This causes conflict amongst the two fighters. Will this cloud their vision or will they be able to stop the German’s from taking over their town?
Jean-Jacques Annaud wrote and directed this film. It was based on actual events of WWII that lasted 180 days. The cast in the movie was phenomenal. Jude Law shone through in his role. He lost his pretty boy image portraying a soldier. Rachel Weisz was very convincing in her role.
I expected a boring war movie with a cheesy love story! I was wrong. I was interested in the events in the film, curious about the differences from the actual war and captivated by the love story. This was a film for both men and women, but not kids. The war scenes were quite graphic. Overall, I really liked this film.
Enjoy!
©2001 KAC