• Genres: Action, Drama, History, Thriller, War
• Tagline: Some Men Are Born To Be Heroes.
• Plot Outline Two Russian and German snipers play a game of cat-and-mouse during the Battle of Stalingrad.
• Plot Synopsis: During the WWII battle of Stalingrad, two snipers, a Russian (Law), and a German (Harris), are locked in a battle of wills and marksmenship, while the Russian is boosted to the status of hero by a political official (Fiennes).
• Plot Keywords: Hanged Boy | Stalingrad | WWII | Destiny | Betrayal | Hero | Mud | Sniper | Jealousy | Nazi Officer | Nazism | Propaganda
• Actors: Jude Law, Ed Harris, Rachel Weisz, Joseph Fiennes, Bob Hoskins
• Directors: Jean-Jacques Annaud

Editorial Review

Like Saving Private Ryan, Enemy at the Gates opens with a pivotal event of World War II–the German invasion of Stalingrad–re-created in epic scale, as ill-trained Russian soldiers face German attack or punitive execution if they flee from the enemy’s advance. Director Jean-Jacques Annaud captures this madness with urgent authenticity, creating a massive context for a more intimate battle waged amid the city’s ruins. Embellished from its basis in fact, the story shifts to an intense cat-and-mouse game between a Russian shepherd raised to iconic fame and a German marksman whose skill is unmatched in its lethal precision. Vassily Zaitzev (Jude Law) has been sniping Nazis one bullet at a time, while the German Major Konig (Ed Harris) has been assigned to kill Vassily and spare Hitler from further embarrassment.

There’s love in war as Vassily connects with a woman soldier (Rachel Weisz), but she is also loved by Danilov (Joseph Fiennes), the Soviet officer who promotes his friend Vassily as Russia’s much-needed hero. This romantic rivalry lends marginal interest to the central plot, but it’s not enough to make this a classic war film. Instead it’s a taut, well-made suspense thriller isolated within an epic battle, and although Annaud and cowriter Alain Godard (drawing from William Craig’s book and David L. Robbins’s novel The War of the Rats) fail to connect the parallel plots with any lasting impact, the production is never less than impressive. Highly conventional but handled with intelligence and superior craftsmanship, this is warfare as strategic entertainment, without compromising warfare as a manmade hell on Earth. –Jeff Shannon

From The New Yorker

In the midst of the siege of Stalingrad, two snipers-an innocent Red Army peasant from the Urals (Jude Law) and an aristocratic Nazi deer hunter (Ed Harris)-stalk each other in the mucky ruins. This elaborate duel might have been perversely interesting as a kind of military sick joke if the absurdity of it were the point. But the director Jean-Jacques Annaud and his longtime collaborator, the producer-writer Alain Godard, make it seem like the entire battle hinged on the struggle between the two specialists. Although the movie starts well, with horrifying epic scenes of the Red Army sacrificing thousands of men to stop the Germans, it rapidly loses all common sense and excitement. With Joseph Fiennes as a hack Party intellectual who makes the Soviet sharpshooter a national hero and Rachel Weisz as a brave Red Army girl who seems to have walked off a recruiting poster. The composer James Horner does an acceptable imitation of Shostakovich’s agonized wartime manner. -David Denby

Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker