Premiere Magazine
(March 2001)
War drama; starring Jude Law, Joseph Fiennes, Ed Harris, and Rachel Weisz; directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud
Release Date: March 16 (Paramount)

If war is hell, then making a movie that depicts the infamous five-month Nazi siege of Stalingrad ought to be at least unpleasant. "The cold - the excruciatingly painful cold," Fiennes recalls. "There were moments on the set that offered a nanosecond glimpse into the conditions these people were exposed to." Director Annaud cites other natural disasters: "We swallowed so much black smoke and dust and mud for months. It was very, very extreme."

Loosely based on historian William Craig's nonfictional account of the siege, the film zeros in on four participants in this grim and sometimes overlooked chapter of World War II. "I'm amazed that such a powerful story hasn't been told," says Annaud. (Seven Years in Tibet). "Jude's character is a hero in Russia. The statue of this guy is still at the very top of the huge monument for the victory of Stalingrad."

Law stars as Vasille, the peasant-turned-sniper who becomes so famous that the Nazis dispatch their own famed sharpshooter (Harris) to outduel him as the battle for the city rages. Meanwhile, Vasili and his best friend, Danilov (Fiennes), a political officer charged with spreading his friend's growing legend, both fall for Tania (Weisz), a young woman fighting with them in the trenches.

For proper verisimilitude, the ruins of the Societ city were re-created in Germany, near the Polish border, and the cast trained for months to acquire their thousand-yard stares. "What's so unusual is that the war was fought by civilians - gender and age made no difference," says Weisz, who did some sniping of her own. "They were just fodder for the Nazis."