Enemy at the Gates

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * * )

Just as Band of Brothers marches on to our small screens, reminding us again of the sacrifices of America's supposed "greatest generation" and how much bullets really hurt, here arrives a film depicting a very un-American part of the Second World War.

While it's a European production - French director, English leading cast, German money translating to a $US80 million ($194 million) production - centred on the siege of Stalingrad, Enemy at the Gates is as Hollywood as they come. Sure it might throw in phrases like "class warfare", have Bob Hoskins playing a pre-Cold-War Nikita Kruschev as a bug-eyed toady to Josef Stalin, fly the red flag and hit the vodka bottle hard.

But underneath it all, it is an eastern-front Western, a battle between two gun-slingers and, as the old Russian proverb says, this town ain't big enough for both of us. Even if this town is a pile of freezing rubble next to the Volga on which the Nazi assault stalled and was repelled.

The film is based on the true story of Russian sniper Vassili Zaitsev (Law), as depicted in William Craig's non-fiction book of the same name.

A farm boy from the Ural mountains, Zaitsev is made a propaganda star of the Red Army for his sharpshooting, which leads to a crosshair-to-crosshair battle with Nazi Major Konig (Ed Harris, the only American and the only piece of inspired casting apparent here), who is brought in to deal with the unwitting Soviet hero.

When the two are playing ballistic hide and seek, Enemy at the Gates is exciting stuff. And the depiction of the desperation of Stalingrad is grimly compelling, right from the opening scenes where ill-equipped and press-ganged Russian relief troops are ferried across the river to the city in scenes reminiscent of, and perhaps aping, the Normandy landings in Saving Private Ryan.

But its major undoing is that it also tries to make love, not war. It sets up an eternal triangle between Zaitsev, the political officer and friend Danilov (Fiennes, hardly making a dent in proceedings) who has made him a star and Tania (Weisz), the Jewish soldier who may be a match for Danilov's intellect but prefers the marksman's simpler charms.

Apart from one striking scene that rings true with its depiction of love and lust in desperate times, the romance seems as misplaced and cliched as the one that lit the fuse on the bomb that was Pearl Harbor.

As for the rest, Enemy at the Gates feels decidedly old-fashioned, right from the opening map that plots Hitler's invasion of Europe (how very Dad's Army) with the voice-over: "Autumn 1942. Europe lies crushed beneath the Nazi jackboot."

Like his previous Seven Years in Tibet, director Annaud strives for mythical resonance in a story about exceptional men caught up in history. But even the best efforts of its heroically overwrought score can't convince that this is anything but a halfway decent western disguised as a war movie full of people with the wrong accents - he may still look tanned after months of crawling around Stalingrad's debris but that Jude Law sure can sound like Michael Caine on a bad day, da?

Cast: Jude Law, Joseph Fiennes, Ed Harris, Rachel Weisz, Bob Hoskins

Director: Jean Jacques Annaud

Rating: R15 (graphic, realistic war scenes)

Running time: 131 mins

Screening: Village, Hoyts