The Times
March 15, 2001
By Adam Mars-Jones

The "enemy" in Enemy at the Gates is the army of the Third Reich, and the "gates" are those of Stalingrad, in 1942. Stalin refuses to contemplate the loss of the city that bears his name, and throws everything he has into its defence. There is one rifle for every two soldiers, and their instructions are simple. The one without a gun follows the one who has one. When the one with the gun is killed, he picks up the gun . . .

It's a treat for British audiences to feel like "us" instead of "them" in an international production - even so bleak a drama as this one. The heroes of the Red Army are played by British stars, while the role of the Nazi villain falls to an American. Jude Law plays Vassili, a shepherd boy from the Urals who proves to be a brilliant sharpshooter, while Joseph Fiennes is Danilov, the political officer who sees the propaganda value of this prodigy in a city losing hope.

Soon Vassili is that rare phenomenon, a sniper who gets sacks of fan mail (to which Danilov dictates the replies), and the balance of morale begins to shift. Then German high command sends Major Konig (Ed Harris) to bring his own sniping skills to bear. It becomes a duel in the middle of carnage - a cat and mouse game in an abattoir.

French directors don't always set out to succeed internationally, but Jean-Jacques Annaud is an exception. Two of his films, highly distinctive projects, have sidestepped the obvious problems by using an invented language (Quest for Fire) or none at all (The Bear).

Enemy at the Gates takes a more conventionally lumpy approach to a world market, having the characters speak English but write Russian - which then has to be translated aloud or subtitled for our benefit. The script, by the director and Alain Godard, is based on a real situation, but it's hard to imagine thereal Konig ever having been involved with 14-year-old Sacha (played by Gabriel Marshall-Thomson), an intimate of Vassili's who passes on information that may be deceptive. Does the English they talk in the film represent German or Russian - or perhaps neither? Rachel Weisz plays Tania, the woman loved by Vassili and Danilov, who loves only one of them. Tania too is a soldier, though Danilov tries to persuade her to take a desk job.

The love interest in war films is normally marginal - no more than a reminder of why sacrifice is worthwhile. Enemy at the Gates is unusual in trying to bring together the romance and the action, to the point where they march in lockstep - unusual, but mistaken in genre terms, bringing together elements that only work apart. It becomes ridiculous that every shift of feeling within the romantic triangle has repercussions on the snipers' slow feud.

The main problem with the film, though, is that Annaud allows himself to be overshadowed by the Hollywood tradition of war movies - though, admittedly, the Hollywood tradition at its most uncompromising. In Enemy at the Gates, the flashbacks to Vassili's learning to shoot in the Urals are reminiscent of The Deer Hunter, while the whole opening section is indebted to Saving Private Ryan.

War movies used to end in a bloodbath: Enemy at the Gates, like Ryan, starts with one, and in a parallel setting, with Red Army troops being landed from boats while German planes strafe them. Spielberg, though, kept music in check (even withdrawing sound altogether at one point), while Annaud sends his composer, James Horner, over the top along with everyone else.

Nothing provides meaning as effectively as music, and every surge of male voice choir on the soundtrack, every balalaika-plink, goes to neutralise the nihilistic spectacle which Annaud has laboured so hard to enact for us. It's true that Saving Private Ryan itself went on to include much softer material, but the contrast between background and foreground was never as jarring as it is here, with grotesque bloodshed all around, and at the centre loving hearts, and never a bullet missing its target.