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The Rice Thresher
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Dalton Tomlin thresher editorial staff Enemy at the Gates, the latest World War II film, is as much of a mixed bag as they come. The acting is satisfactory, occasionally great and occasionally bad; some action sequences are astonishingly tense and well-made, while others are flawed imitations of Saving Private Ryan; and the plot, based on a true story, is powerful but fails to be completely believable. Even its length is something of a toss-up: If it were 20 minutes shorter it would be more personal, 20 minutes longer, and it would be it an epic. The setting is the Battle of Stalingrad in the fall of 1942. The Germans are in the middle of invading the Soviet Union, and if they take Stalingrad, the rest of the country is as good as theirs. The Soviet army is suffering from an overwhelming lack of morale. Recruits are crammed into trains (not unlike victims of the Holocaust) and sent directly to the front line. Because they're attacked as they cross the Volga River, many don't even make it that far. If any soldiers try to retreat or run away, their own officers shoot them. Enter Vassily Zaitsev (Jude Law), a farm boy raised to be a sharpshooter. There's some humor and tension when every other soldier is assigned a rifle and he isn't one of them (due to short supply). Despite scrambling to find a weapon the whole time, he is one of the few survivors of his first combat experience. He soon runs into political officer Danilov (Joseph Fiennes), a propaganda writer and distributor, and saves both their lives by taking out several officers. Danilov spreads the word of Zaitsev's ability in order to increase morale among the Soviet troops and citizens. As Zaitsev kills dozens upon dozens of German officers, his notoriety on both sides increases. The educated soldier Tania (Rachel Weisz) falls in love with him. Nikita Khrushchev (Bob Hoskins), the military leader in Stalingrad and future dictator, personally acknowledges his work. Most importantly, the Germans send their top sniper, Major Konig (Ed Harris), to kill him and crush the Soviets' spirit. Konig is a bad-ass with a rifle, and Zaitsev, who feels Danilov is building him into more of a hero than he really is, is terrified of Konig. Their smaller conflict is expertly intertwined with that of the overall battle. Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud (Seven Years in Tibet) and written by Annaud and Alain Godard, Enemy is the most expensive European-produced film ever, with a budget of more than $80 million. It's unlikely that throwing more money into it would have made it better, but more experienced direction could have. In all fairness, since it was based on a true story, there's only so much leeway one can have without overstepping historical bounds. I appreciated the subtle theme that neither country is the good guy by default. The metaphorical portrait of the soldiers in trains effectively points out the Soviet Union's cruelty; after all, Stalin was their leader. Furthermore, there are a few points about the failings of communism - how an ideal can be good in theory but not in reality. And aside from one particularly deplorable act, Konig, the central villain, isn't really a bad guy; he's just doing his job. I got the sense that he didn't even want to be fighting, as if he came out of retirement for one final showdown. A major weakness in the story is how much the man-to-man battle supposedly affects the world around them. It seems like the filmmakers make the shootouts have far more of an impact on the grand scale than they probably had. The love story is something of a distraction. Some of it is necessary because Danilov's jealousy affects the story, but trimming a few scenes would not have hurt much. One thing that never fails to annoy me is the language barrier. The film would make next to nothing in the box office if it were authentic (i.e., spoken in Russian and German), so it's understandable why English is used. Still, believable accents would have gone a long way - the Soviet leads (Law, Fiennes, Weisz) are British and don't try to hide it, and Harris' bland American accent makes his character much less German. Despite its many shortcomings, Enemy is just good enough to recommend for its sniper scenes - every one is intense and well-shot. Unlike many movies' action sequences and special effects that are there just to look good, these confrontations are essential to the plot and are as dramatically important as any other scene.
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