Flak Magazine: Review of Enemy at the Gates, 3-22-01

The phrase "a horse apiece" originated from the notion that from your current location, the journey to the destination would cost the stamina of a horse for either of two routes. For instance, if the travel takes you high over the mountains or low through the marsh, your horse is kaput by the time you get to your destination. Enemy at the Gates costs precisely that: Going one way with a war story or the other with a love story, the viewer is exhausted and lost at the end, despite a glorious journey.

Sniper Vassily Zaitsev (Jude Law) is a good soldier with a great shot pushed to stardom by his pesky promoter Danilov (Joseph Fiennes). The Russians are defending Stalingrad from the Nazi forces that hope to land a major blow to Stalin's forces. Every man, woman and child, including token female lead Tania (Rachel Weisz), stands to defend their city. The Germans bring in legendary shooter Koenig (Ed Harris) to take out Zaitsev, and the story ensues.

Ever since Saving Private Ryan, the bar for the depiction of combat in war movies has been raised to the ceiling. Director Jean-Jacques Annaud waves the same wand he used to create the world of Seven Years in Tibet — this time with aid of stunning CGI — but the major battle scenes are entirely Ryan-esque, sampling at a higher rate than the Gladiator opening did. A war movie is about war, and although it was the same war, Annaud's borrowing leaves viewers waiting for Tom Hanks and Tom Sizemore to charge through the lines.

How, then, is this not a Ryan rehash? The first sense you get is greater internal hostility; Russian soldiers face fire from both the Germans and their own ranks if they desert. But more importantly, Annaud takes the story and sets it on the tracks of a love triangle between Zaitsev, Danilov (worthy of a slap upside the head and nothing more) and Tania. Annaud forces this to intermingle with the war scene — is there better bait than the lady? — and culminate in a dirty, dirty sex scene between Weisz and Law.

Perhaps Annaud was simply trying to fill out the story. After all, whittling it down to the basics, Gates is about Zaitsev against Koenig, man against man, in a sneaky and silent duel between master marksmen. This should be the sole focus, and for great stretches, it is. If Gates is to be a war movie, then let it be about war, and swat away Weisz, Fiennes and the rest of the distractions. (Picture The Hunt for Red October with a love subplot and you'll have some sense of how wrong this approach can be.) Harris dominates the screen, and Law, meant to be underwhelming, plays into their dynamic with such delicacy that a two-hour film about their cat-and-mouse chase would be satisfying enough.

The setting of Stalingrad, bleak and historic, crucial and tenuous, is a page out of a history book. Unfortunately, the James Horner score decimates the mise en scène; his riffs and themes smell of some of his past works, specifically Star Trek II and Willow. Imagine if John Williams wove some Jaws or Star Wars strains into his Ryan soundtrack to get a sense of how Horner's recycling hurts the film.

The other concern is the accents. For the precision and detail needed to correctly tell a war story — a ground on which Ryan failed — one of the lesser concerns, it seems, would be making sure your talent was speaking in the right voice. Ed Harris is on key, except for the gaffe that he speaks German to the Germans and English to the Russians. Weisz's good performance is thrown to the wind by the traces of Brit in her voice. Jude Law, Fiennes, what, with the… it all gets very confusing very quickly. The malady is characterized by Bob Hoskins playing a Cockney Krushchev. Between this and waiting for Val Kilmer and George Takei to ride into the rubble, Gates gets laughable.

Recent cinematic trends have shown us that for viewers, the grail is in the destination, not the journey (see The Usual Suspects or Scream 3). The ending of Gates smells of rewrites, breaking actors out of Method and the resolution out of the narrative. If the viewer is meant to bear with Gates as it takes away the war — its hook — and throws in love — a sure sinker — how should that viewer cope with any kind of twist on the resolution? By the time you get to the end of Gates, whether you were a fan of the token love triangle or the sniper combat, you had to endure the other half. It's at least a horse apiece, and Enemy at the Gates asks you to pony up more than it should.

— Andy Stilp (andy.stilp at gmail dot com)