EnemyAtTheGates

"Spy vs. Spy" meets "Stalingrad". WWII is at its peak and the Nazi war machine is pressing through Russia. In the ruined battlefield of Stalingrad, a young soldier with amazing sharp-shooting skills rescues a Soviet propaganda officer, who then makes the boy out to be a national hero, so as to raise the morale of the troops. In response, the Nazis call in their best sniper (Ed Harris) to hunt down and kill this new threat. A game of spy-versus-spy ensues.

• AlexBobbs - A neat WWII film. It falls short of being really powerful (like "Saving Private Ryan" of the classic "Stalingrad"), but is still quite fun and remarkable. The battle scenes are appropriately gruesome, but the best parts involve the two snipers trying to outwit each other in a continuous game where it's not clear who is the hunter and who is the hunted. To add to the mix, there's a neat character of a young Russian boy who acts as a secret informant. For which side? You'll be guessing until the end.

• CurtisVinson thought this movie was just plain bad. Not astonishingly bad or amazingly bad, and I have seen much worse, but bad none the less. I had some problems with the military accuracy of the film which I won't go into here because they are at some level just quibbles and I don't know as much about the Russian side of the war as I perhaps ought. The central problem was the plot, which I simply found too hackneyed and melodramatic to tolerate. The worst moment in the movie was when the main character falls asleep and misses a shot at his adversary; we even get to see the crosshairs lined up on his head. The scene was totally unnecessary and was simply hard to believe: they sacrificed realism for drama, but what they got instead was melodrama. While I wasn't able to completely predict all the important twists in the plot, I got most of them, and I saw some coming (like the unnecessary sex scene) far, far too soon for my liking. Finally, I have to ask: why can't Hollywood make a movie about war which about war, rather than something else? EnemyAtTheGates isn't about war, it's about the old favorite, a mano-a-mano duel. This time, the duel is between snipers, but such a thing happening during the battle of Stalingrad strains the bounds of my credulity. On the upside, the acting wasn't too bad. The movie was rather long, a little over two hours, but not intolerably so. I'd give it a two of possible five.

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CategoryMovie