Enemy at the Gates (2001)
Average Rating: 5.7/10
Reviews Counted: 137
Fresh: 74 | Rotten: 63
Atmospheric and thrilling, Enemy at the Gates gets the look and feel of war right. However, the love story seems out of place.
Average Rating: 5.5/10
Critic Reviews: 33
Fresh: 16 | Rotten: 17
Atmospheric and thrilling, Enemy at the Gates gets the look and feel of war right. However, the love story seems out of place.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.6/5
User Ratings: 221,718
Movie Info
A turning point in 20th century war history is the focus of this fact-based account of the 1942-1943 battle of Stalingrad, in which the Germans were finally defeated by Russian influence -- one of the bloodiest battles in World War II history. The film stars Jude Law as Vassili, a marksman from the Urals who is transported to Stalingrad in 1942, and a master German sniper, Major Koenig (Ed Harris). Koenig, an expert German sniper, is determined to eliminate his formidable opponent by any means
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Cast
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Joseph Fiennes
Danilov -
Jude Law
Vassili Zaitsev -
Rachel Weisz
Tania -
Bob Hoskins
Khrushchev -
Ed Harris
Konig -
Ron Perlman
Koulikov -
Eva Mattes
Mother Filipov -
Matthias Habich
General von Paulus -
Sophie Rois
Ludmilla -
Mikhail Matveev
Vassili's grandfathe... -
Gabriel Marshall-Tho...
Sacha
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All Critics (139) | Top Critics (34) | Fresh (74) | Rotten (63) | DVD (30)
There's never much risk of reality intruding--just a lot of histrionic James Horner music nd plenty of designer stubble on the soldiers' faces.
Set-pieces get you so far (and Annaud delights in blowing this set to pieces), but the script's shortcomings aren't camouflaged by the decision to adopt Home Counties' accents as the film's lingua franca.
Top CriticIt's as if an obsessed movie nut had decided to collect every bad war-movie convention on one computer and program it to spit out a script.
Hackneyed material.
Any flaws in execution pale against those moments when the film brings history to vital life.
The story hits and misses for more than two hours following its opening artillery bloodbath.
more character development and depth would vastly improve this
Tense and violent WWII movie.
it could have held back on the parts featuring boredom because they did tend to drag the suspense down a bit
While it does have some solid moments of action, the film as a whole is laughable.
Enemy at the Gates won't find too many friends at the box office -- fans of war movies (and of Jude Law) will appreciate it, but there isn't much for everyone else in this mid-March downer.
There's a decent movie buried in here somewhere, but the lousy love triangle and ultimate lack of focus make this WWII drama a bit hard to take.
Flatulent hero-worship of a man played by a tired-looking actor who deserves funkier roles.
Annaud shows a real knack for suspense here, enough to make me hope he will do more action-adventure in the future.
If only ambition was the bar at which to measure the quality of motion pictures, Enemy at the Gates could sit atop the best of the year.
There's ambition, and then there's pretense. It's a common mistake for both filmmakers and filmgoers to mistake the latter for the former.
Worth the trouble, but make sure to leave the history notes at home.
It generally succeeds at telling a truly heroic story, providing yet another vehicle to showcase the talents of Law and Harris, and of their supporting cast.
[It's] clearly meant to measure up to or reach past what Steven Spielberg did in Saving Private Ryan. But it is one of the poorest imitations I have seen so far.
The central thriller element of the film more than compensates for these deficiencies as well as any of the dodgier script moments.
While Enemy at the Gates aims to do justice to history, it trips and falls on its own romantic pretense.
Enemy at the Gates is a good movie that could have been great, if not for the inflated running time.
Time and again the movie feels like it's working toward a Hollywood moment but always retreats before succumbing to the opportunity.
Audience Reviews for Enemy at the Gates
Super Reviewer
I think this films suffers in the same way as some other historic films in the way they add a mushy love story. I can understand why they do this but it really does drag the main premise of the plot down, especially here. The setup is perfect for a real tense nail biter, the setting is a war torn Stalingrad and the effects/location teams have really done their homework here. Creeping in n out of bombed out buildings, masses of rubble, skeletons of buildings adorn the landscapes, bodies strewn around, the whole city is a shell of a former existence, a former life.
Into this land of ruin we have Jude Law as real Russian sniper Vassili Zaitsev who is pitted against German sniper (supposedly real) Major Erwin König. When you see either character on screen and lurking about it gets your heart racing, you wanna see what will happen, who will pick off who, predictably we know of course but the atmosphere is cracking. But my previous point, against this we have a droopy love tale which merely offers up sappy forced emotions to try and engage you further. Unfortunately all it does is kinda annoy you because you wanna see sniping action.
Being a film based on sniping and realism don't expect this to be chock full of explosions and mass action. What action there is is naturally slow but nicely nerve racking, well reasonably. It is a bit hokey because we all know damn well the main two won't possibly die until the end yet anyone else is fair game haha sniper fodder.
The film captures the propaganda of the time well, the way the Soviets made Zaitsev a national hero and tried to scare the Germans. Vice versa with the imposing threat of the older German marksman brought in to defeat the Soviet. All roles are played well in the visual sense, what I mean is all the cast look like they belong in this era, especially the drawn gaunt looking Harris. The only issue I had was the fact no one really tried for authentic accents bar Hoskins (looking like an angry Russian Hobbit). Law still has his cockney accent, Fiennes sounds English as does Weisz and Hoskins has a muddled cockney/Russian thing going on...but at least he tries.
I didn't really agree with one action that the director makes Harris's character (König) carry out in the film, a grim scene involving a young boy he trusts. Unsure how accurate that is suppose to be, I dare say its completely crap, they shouldn't really add things like that unless its accurate.
A well paced film that does show the realities of war to a degree if somewhat glorifying or romanticising it a touch. The Russians tend to drink and be generally rowdy when not fighting which doesn't seem too right. Not as epic as the films poster designs make out but still a decent war film focusing on a very good tale. The silent stern cold ruthlessness of Harris as the German sniper stands out for me here, but you still feel for him at the end. After all its war and every man simply does what he needs to do to survive.
Super Reviewer
Movies Like Enemy at the Gates
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- Danilov: I've been such a fool, Vassili. Man will always be a man. There is no new man. We tried so hard to create a society that was equal, where there'd be nothing to envy your neighbour. But there's always something to envy. A smile, a friendship, something you don't have and want to appropriate. In this world, even a Soviet one, there will always be rich and poor. Rich in gifts, poor in gifts. Rich in love, poor in love.
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- Vassili Zaitsev: Sad to have a dream you know won't happen.
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- Khrushchev: You won't give up the river bank. I don't care if you lost half your men. Lose the other half. Lose yourself.
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- Khrushchev: You see, they're stubborn. That's the good thing about the Germans. Man, you got to admit, when they get an idea in their heads...
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- General von Paulus: My army is not designed for this kind of fighting. Yesterday, yet again I had to promote 25 sergeants to replace the officers shot down by the sharpshooters. Those snipers are demoralizing my people. This city is no more than a heap of ruins, but the Fuhrer's persisting. We should trust the fuhrer's instinct, he always managed to lead us to victory. We shall be at home for Christmas. How are you going to go about finding this young Russian?
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Foreign Titles
- Stalingrad (FR)
