The Independent (UK)
18 March 2001
By Nicholas Barber

There are two war films out this week, and the hero doesn't lead his trusty platoon into battle in either of them. In Enemy at the Gates, he hides himself away and picks his opponents off at long range. And in Thirteen Days - a Cold War film, to be exact - his opponents are his own generals, and he clashes with them over a conference table.

JFK's opposite number, Khrushchev, appears in Enemy at the Gates in the form of Bob Hoskins. It's 1942, and the premier-to-be is sent to Stalingrad to restore the besieged city's morale. An ambitious propaganda officer, Danilov (Joseph Fiennes), has an idea. He believes that the people need a hero to hearten them, and he knows just the man: a simple shepherd-turned-sharpshooter named Vassili (Jude Law). With Danilov handling his discovery's PR, Vassili soon becomes the country's most celebrated sniper. He is loved by the Russian people and in particular by the winsome Tania (Rachel Weisz), a would-be sniper herself. But Danilov is jealous of his protégé, and the Germans are infuriated by him. They send their own top marksman (Ed Harris) to Stalingrad to bump him off.

Establishing the action with a getting-shot-to-pieces-in-the-water-before-you've-even-reached-the-battlefield set piece, Jean-Jacques Annaud immediately invites comparisons with Saving Private Ryan. They're comparisons that Enemy at the Gates can withstand. The scenes of fear and carnage are just as appallingly credible, and Stalingrad is a wasteland of crashed planes, dismembered statues and buildings that have collapsed into the mud and blood. Annaud has taken the slogan "War is Hell", and put it on screen.

Enemy at the Gates is not just Aping Private Ryan, however. Spielberg's movie was, essentially, about American goodies duffing up German baddies, whereas Annaud's has a bit more to it. For one thing, its protagonists are serving under Stalin. For another, the hero is just an ordinary fellow - albeit, a crack shot - who's been spin-doctored to celebrity.

Intriguing as all this is, Annaud, unlike Vassili, doesn't always hit his target: he is much better at shooting shooting, as it were, than shooting talking. His dialogue could be mistaken for an unsubtle parody ("Try not to spill the soup, you Marxist bastard!") and Law, Fiennes and Weisz's love triangle is a stagey afterthought. Weisz, especially, comes across as a plucky head girl who'd be more comfortable with a hockey stick than a rifle.

A big problem is the accents. The English actors use English accents, which is fair enough, but if the Russians sound English, how come the Germans sound German? Why does Fiennes go Russian every now and then, and why is Law's rural Ural lad a mockney geezer? Most distracting of all is Ron Perlman as Vassili's friend Koulikov. Take an American trying to put on an English accent in order to play a Russian, and you end up wondering what an Australian is doing in Stalingrad.