The Courier Mail (Queensland)
26 July 2001
By Des Partridge

The devastating Battle of Stalingrad involving Russian and German forces was considered one of the most significant events of World War II - helping to shape East-West politics for the rest of the 20th century. With hundreds of thousands of troops engaged from both sides in a fight to the death, the potential was there for an epic war drama, especially with World War II back in vogue with films such as Saving Private Ryan and Pearl Harbor.

Curiously, however, French director Jean-Jacques Annaud (The Bear, Seven Years in Tibet) and co-writer Alain Godard have chosen instead to tell an intensely personal story within a messy re-creation of the Battle of Stalingrad, claimed to be the most expensive film ever made in Europe. It certainly looks big, and it's noisy, and it's bloody, and it's frankly muddled, with chaotic crowd scenes that fail to involve the emotions as much as the filmmakers surely hoped they would.

Annaud, however, does manage to draw some suspense from the centrepiece of the drama - efforts by the Germans through a sharp-shooter named Major Konig (Ed Harris) to dispose of Russia's secret weapon, a former shepherd named Vassili (Jude Law). A Russian propaganda specialist, Danilov (Joseph Fiennes), seizes upon Vassili's sharp-shooting abilities to make him a hero to Russians everywhere, inspiring the Germans to make him their No 1 target in Stalingrad.

Vassili's story (based on fact) is demeaned by Annaud and Godard's crude love triangle device with Rachel Weisz as the Russian/Jewess soldier desired by both Vassili and the scheming Danilov. Sensibly, Annaud allows the cast to speak in English, but there's nothing fresh about the dialogue. The film's liveliest performance comes from the surprisingly cast Bob Hoskins in the role of Nikita Krushchev, the future Soviet leader who was sent to Stalingrad to ensure the city did not fall into German hands, and succeeded. German director Joseph Vilsmaier's 1993 Stalingrad is a superior drama about this devastating piece of World War II history.