DIRECTOR
Jean-Jacques
Annaud
SCREENWRITERS
Jean-Jacques
Annaud
Alain Godard
PRODUCERS
Jean-Jacques Annaud
John D. Schofield
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Robert Fraisse
MUSIC
James Horner
EDITORS
Noëlle Boisson
Humphrey Dixon
CAST
Joseph Fiennes (Commisar Danilov)
Jude Law (Vassili Zaitsev)
Rachel Weisz (Tania Chernova)
Bob Hoskins (Nikita Khrushchev)
Ed Harris (Major König)
Ron Perlman (Koulikov)
MPAA rating: R
Running
time: 131m
U.S. release: March 16, 2001
Video availability: VHS - DVD
Official
website
Other Jean-Jacques
Annaud films
reviewed on this website:
- Seven
Years in Tibet
|
In
Enemy at the Gates, the murky and florid new war drama,
Ed Harris plays a revered Nazi sniper named Major König;
take the "i" out of that name and you have a Dr.
Strangelove character. König has been written as a gentleman
assassin, the sort of aristocratic butcher who does his job professionally,
without much zeal. Damned if Ed Harris doesn't find the soft
spots in this guy, though. He makes König both iconic and
human, an officer without much emotional loyalty to the Third
Reich. Since Harris' scenes are the only ones that stand out
in any way, his laconically charismatic performance muddies the
waters considerably. He has the aura and presence of a hero,
a great man, yet he's not playing one (much like his star turn
in 1987's Walker,
still for me Harris' best and scariest work).
No, the great man in Enemy at the Gates is supposed to
be Russian sharpshooter Vassili Zaitsev, whose skill with a rifle
gives the dog-tired Soviet army a lift in spirits after getting
their asses kicked by the Nazis. The hometown papers exalt Vassili
as a hero, a label he resists; "I can't carry it any more,"
he eventually says, referring to the media-manufactured mantle
of greatness. Jude Law, who plays Vassili with none of the wit
and suavity he's shown in films ranging from Gattaca
to eXistenZ
to The
Talented Mr. Ripley, could have been saying the same
thing. Vassili's friend Danilov (Joseph Fiennes), an officer
who cranks out Soviet propaganda talking up Vassili's acumen,
performs roughly the same function as the movie itself, which
introduces us to Vassili as a boy taking aim at a wolf.
Director Jean-Jacques Annaud, having gotten himself in over his
head with 1997's Seven
Years in Tibet (wherein Brad Pitt was a Nazi soldier
who met the young Dalai Lama and learned to, like, chill out
and be nice), tries to structure Enemy as a wartime drama
far removed from all that troublesome ideology. For most of the
film, you forget -- as you're probably meant to -- that this
is a conflict between Stalinism and Nazism. Here it's simply
two guys who are really good at what they do, waiting
for chances to blow each other away. Indeed, since the Russians
are all played by Brits -- including Vassili's sweetheart (Rachel
Weisz) and even old Nikita Khrushchev (Bob Hoskins, acting like
he needs a good strong pint) -- and the major Nazi is played
by an American, the uninitiated might assume the movie is a weird
amalgam of World War II and the Revolutionary War.
Annaud, like Ridley Scott before him (Gladiator),
should bow in the general direction of Steven Spielberg and give
thanks that Saving
Private Ryan made it okay to show lots of guys getting
their brainpans sprayed all over the mud and still get an R rating,
as long as the carnage is in service of the Serious Theme that
war is hell. There's one nice touch that suggests the ruthless
economy of war, when the Russian soldiers are allotted only one
rifle per every two men, and when an armed man falls, the unarmed
soldier trailing him is expected to pick up the weapon. Vassili,
of course, is stuck without a rifle and has trouble getting ahold
of one. It feels like a synthetic movie detail: jeez, give this
guy a weapon, don't you know he's the hero?
A lot else in Enemy at the Gates feels synthetic, too.
Poor Rachel Weisz is in the movie to prove that Vassili is heterosexual
(she needs projects like The
Mummy that let her have some fun; not much fun to be
had here), and there's a little Russian kid who goes back and
forth between the two rival snipers; his fate brings the plot
to a wholly movie-ish face-off between the furious Vassili and
the weary König. I will say, though, that the scene gives
Ed Harris a juicy opportunity to underplay resignation in the
face of death. (If you think that's a spoiler, you really need
to see more movies.) Enemy at the Gates is worth seeing
just for Harris' expression when he realizes that his only equal
in the war is about to rearrange the equation. The rest of it
is flatulent hero-worship of a man played by a tired-looking
actor who deserves funkier roles. Twenty years ago, a young,
hungry Ed Harris might've played Vassili, and his intensity would've
burned small holes in our foreheads; today he gets König,
and we have to settle for what he does with that. |
