I saw this film by Jean-Jaques Annaud
when it came call at the celluloids. What I think most vividly is the opening scene. Certainly on the large screen it was astonishing - because it was so deadly alarming.
Nevertheless, I experienced that from so thereon lost its impact. Suchly so that while I sort of basked it at the celluloid, I ne'er troubled to purchase the DVD until it was rattlingly inexpensive to add to my significant warfare and action flick accumulation.
The cast is fantabulous, such as Judas Jurisprudence, Ralph Fiennes, ED Harris, Rachel Weisz, but it maked n't grip me beyond being interesting.
Virago 's reader Jeff Shannon composed a reassessment that I muchly hold with:
Enemy at the Gates opens with a polar event of Universe Warfare II-the German invasion of Stalingrad-recreated in Salving Private Ryan-like heroic scale as ill-trained Russian soldiers confront German onset or punitory executing if they fly from the enemy 's progression. Manager Jean-Jacques Annaud seizures this lunacy with pressing legitimacy, making a monumental context for a more intimate fight engaged amidst the metropolis 's ruins. Embroidered from its footing in point of fact, the narration displacements to an intense cat-and-mouse game between a Russian shepherd raised to iconic celebrity, and a German sharpshooter whose acquirement is odd in its deadly preciseness. Vassily Zaitzev ( Jude Jurisprudence ) holds been sniping Nazis one slug at once, while the German Major Konig ( ED Harris ) holds been delegated to kill Vassily and save Hitler from farther embarrassment. There Holds love in that warfare, excessively, as Vassily ties with a woman soldier ( Rachel Weisz ), but she is likewise loved by Danilov ( Joseph Fiennes ), the Soviet officer who encourages his friend Vassily as USSR 's much-needed hero. This romanticistic competition bestows fringy involvement to the primal game, but it Holds not adequate to do this a classical warfare picture. Alternatively it Holds a taut, well-made suspense thriller insulate within an heroic conflict, and although Annaud and cowriter Alain Godard ( forcing from William Craig 's book and David Liter Robbins ' novel The Warfare of the Rats ) neglect to tie the parallel games with any permanent impact, the production is ne'er to a lesser degree impressive. Highly conventional but handled with intelligence and superior workmanship, this is war as strategical amusement, without compromising war as a semisynthetic inferno. Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
It is deserving purchasing the pic, because you can get the Videodisk inexpensive presents. If but for the gap scene.