The time: 1942.   The place: Stalingrad, "a city on the Volga where the fate of the world is being decided."

Enemy At The Gates is a war movie, a WWII movie with no American characters.  It deals with the siege of Stalingrad where the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union was stopped, so we're rooting for the Russians. 

The battle for Stalingrad is a big subject, and there are some large gruesome battle scenes, but the story focuses on one man, shepherd turned sniper Vassili Zaitsev (Jude Law).  

We meet Vassili as he is one of the troops being rushed to the front in locked boxcars and then shipped across the river under heavy bombardment and strafing fire.  Once at the front, the soldiers are issued their weapons - one man a rifle and the next a clip of five bullets, as a bull-horn wielding sargeant repeatedly explains the battle 'plan' - "The one with the rifle shoots.  The one without follows him.  When the one with the rifle gets killed, the one following him picks up the rifle and shoots."

And now Vassili is charging into battle - armed only with a clip of five bullets.   It's carnage.  The soldiers who break and try to retreat are shot by machine gunners from their own army.   Vassili never even got his hands on a rifle. 

After the battle, the ground is thick with bodies.  Vassili is playing dead among the  bodies in a ruined fountain, when he is joined by Danilov (Joseph Fiennes).   As they watch from hiding, a German officer and entourage takes a break for a wash and a smoke.  Vassili finds a rifle among the bodies and puts his clip to good use.  Five bullets, five dead Germans. 

Danilov is impressed, and he is a political officer - basically an Army propagandist.  He decides to make Vassili a star.   Nikita Kruschev (Bob Hoskins) agrees with Danilov that the people need heroes - Danilov is promoted to headquarters and Vassili to the Sniper Division.   Vassili eliminates German officers and Danilov writes about his exploits, articles that are published throughout the Soviet Union, making Vassili a hero. 

Now I'm no strategist or military historian, so I don't know if Stalingrad was as important for the Germans to take and the Russians to hold as the leadership obviously considered it.  But for our characters, the question is really 'above their paygrade' - the Russians have their orders to hold at all cost and the Germans to take at all cost, and neither Hitler nor Stalin are gentle with generals who fail. 

Stalingrad isn't even a city anymore, it's rubble.  Battlefields have names like "the department store" and "the factory".  But there is still a remnant of the city's population, living in basements and tunnels, and it's at the basement home of  Mother Filipov (Eva Mattes) that Vasilli meets Tania (Rachel Weisz). 

Uh-oh.  Both Vassili and Danilov are attracted to Tania.  Tania is in the Army (as are a lot of women, even in combat),  but she's an educated girl who'd been to the university before the war.   They meet her as Danilov is helping Vassili answer his fan mail - and Danilov spells out the easy words to make Vassili seem less educated.  (Heh.)  But of course it's Vassili Tania is interested in.

Vassili doesn't have everything his own way in the sniper business.  Frustrated with the toll snipers are taking on their officer corps, the Germans bring in a sniper of their own, the coolly aristocratic Major Konig (Ed Harris).  Now the battle is personal, a stalking game between Konig and Vassili, and it's one Vassili is more and more sure he's going to lose, Konig is just that good. 

Both armies are following the duel; as Danilov says, "A noble from Bavaria who hunts deer against a shepherd boy from the Urals who poaches wolves.  It's more than a confrontation, it's the essence of class struggle!"

Enemy At The Gate is an absorbing, well-written and well-directed story, well-acted by gorgeous people who have attained Beautiful-When-Grimy level.  But a note of caution for the squeamish: this is also a very violent movie, and it's not only hordes of extras for whom the blood spurts.  More than one character we've come to know gets shot in the head.   Urban warfare at its most desperate, and yet a compelling and in many ways an inspiring film.

This one's a keeper.



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