Enemy at the Gates (2001)

Solid war movie. The cat-and-mouse duel between Jude Law and Ed Harris is engaging. Yeah, the romance is the least interesting but but at least we got an ass shot of Weisz. I presume it's her;we saw her ass in The Brothers Bloom.

It is a good and interesting WWII movie that focuses on this one cat and mouse game between 2 expert snipers, one veteran and one young. We don't get many smaller scale more personal war movies like this. The issues I have with the movie are the romance/love triangle that is happening and I think Joseph Fiennes gives a bad performance that drags down every scene he is in. The movie is great when it focuses on just Jude Law and Ed Harris trying to outsmart each other. I also like that the movie doesn't make Ed Harris's character flat-out evil. His relationship with the child is key to this. Great art direction and a good score from James Horner add to the effect.

I said I don't like the romance aspect of the movie, but the sex scene is very well done and I think it is the opposite of funny. I think it is a quietly beautiful scene. It adds this feeling of warmth, human connection and love in a cold, violent and deadly situation. It is erotic, but also a very emotionally warm scene. 

7/10

Great war film, and Jude Law does an excellent job. As well as Ed Harris. Weisz is great too, I like the fact that threw in little details like her studying Goethe (or at least having the book in her library). I didn't really have a problem with Fiennes as the jealous political officer. It lent a bit of a love triangle which was interesting even if the subplot in itself seems a little weak, kind of like a lot of older war movies that had to have at least one female love interest to bring in the women audience to the theater.

I've read the book that it is loosely based on, Notes (or Thoughts) of a Sniper that was written by the real Vasily Zaitsev. There was a bit of a sniper's duel between Zaitsev and a Major Konig according to Zaitsev, but a lot of the movie is not really based on reality. The scene where the soldiers get off the boat after crossing the Volga is not exactly truthful, but it does make the plight of the troops seem even more desperate. They weren't handing out a rifle to one soldier and a clip to the next. However, it's possible that some of Zaitsev's book was Soviet propaganda as well so it's not exactly sure what is the real truth.

There might have been some romance between the male and female soldiers and Zaitsev alludes to having a bit of a crush on one of the female snipers but the book doesn't get into detail if he ever made any real moves on her.

The actual fighting in Stalingrad truly was barbaric, Zaitsev mentions the Germans using explosive and incendiary rounds on their targets. It's amazing that the sewers would be a means for the Russian troops to get behind an enemy position that were literally above them in a blown up tractor factory. The opposing sides were literally within a matter of yards of each other in several sectors of the city.

I don't know why westerners think that two people must fuck in order to convey that they are truly in love. We Indians usually manage without this in our movies.

Two triangles in the film. The romantic triangle was for the women, and was kind of dull.

The triangle with the German sniper, the small child, and the child's mother was much more riveting, and actually made this a better movie. If it was just the romantic triangle, it would be a snooze fest. 

There was too much expository violence and special effects in the movie, which brings it down. It's like many modern day examples of King Lear's "full of sound and fury signifying nothing". The appeasement of the Beavis and Butthead crowd for gore and pain is overdone in modern movies, and certainly overdone here. It was trite in 2001. It was trite in 1971, to be honest. And it brings down the movie's value.

5/10 very mediocre. I'm probably generous to it because we don't expect much from modern movies.