Enemy at the Gates

Film.com Gemma Files

Though issues of politics and philosophy are touched upon, this is a film about the people inside the uniforms -- a story of human beings under pressure, forced by circumstance to make choices both impulsive and, on occasion, heroic. It's also the new year's single most satisfying movie experience thus far.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

The sniper's life is a lonely one, full of shallow breathing and delayed gratification. Solitary as it is, Jude Law manages to get a little action in the bunkers of wartime Stalingrad in the ambitious but sometimes inadvertently silly Enemy at the Gates.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

This is spectacle cinema made with individual flair; maybe someone in Hollywood will notice that it's still possible.

Mr. Showbiz Larry Terenzi

Marred by an unconvincing love triangle and an insincere dénouement, it's a story that nonetheless resonates as much as "Saving Private Ryan does."

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Any flaws in execution pale against those moments when the film brings history to vital life.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Developing late in the film, the romantic subplot has the effect of retarding the war story, stretching it out and adding unnecessary elements of sentimentality and sensationalism.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Keeps its eye on the big picture even when focusing on the small scene.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Enemy at the Gates, is no "Saving Private Ryan" - but thrilling, bravura stretches make it consistently entertaining, if less than profound, filmmaking.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

It's remarkable, a war story told as a chess game where the loser not only dies, but goes by necessity to an unmarked grave.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A physically gorgeous production with a strong, clear conflict at its center. It's grueling but also exhilarating. Perhaps its ambitiousness is the film's biggest problem. Trying for dramatic sensitivity, historical scope, touching romance and shocking violence and suspense, it gets stretched too thin.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

It's a sporadically thrilling visual epic and a gruesome reminder that war is hell.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Enemy at the Gates has its deficiencies, but the first-rate cast is not among them.

USA Today Mike Clark

Annaud's epic might have worked better dramatically as a smaller, more focused picture. The best scenes simply involve Law and Harris playing sneaky professional games (less cat-and-mouse than cat-and-cat) with each other.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

It's too circumscribed and polite for the story it's telling, curiously deficient in the unexpected.

Time Richard Corliss

Law, sexy and crafty as ever, and here with a flinty innocence, proves again he has the star-quality goods.

LA Weekly Chuck Wilson

Despite the success of these action sequences, Annaud and his ultraserious cast are so determined (admirably) to keep war from seeming romantic that we are never quite pulled into the movie.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

As long as you focus on the central sniper-versus-sniper story -- and not the dreadful mishmash of jarring accents or the film's unconvincing romantic subplot or any of the personal relationships -- you'll enjoy it.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

The one valuable prize for audiences in this war pic Cracker Jack box is Jude Law. Once again the talented Mr. Law makes more of a role than most movies know what to do with.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

The love story, not to mention plot holes large enough to swallow entire platoons, so bogs down the story that whatever tension the Vassili-Konig confrontation creates disappears every time Weisz appears on-screen; she tears apart comrades--and the movie.

Village Voice Amy Taubin

It does offer Annaud the opportunity to show his directorial muscle in elaborate battle scenes, where many bodies are torn apart and blood flows freely.

TV Guide Frank Lovece

Photographed as harsh spectacle in brown and gray with unfailingly overcast skies, the story is affecting and suspenseful enough when focusing on Vassili, the humble peasant youth, and his patrician adversary playing a chess-like game of cat-and-mouse.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Enemy at the Gates is a disappointment primarily because it seems so rich with possibilities.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

War is hell, war is cruelty, war is toil and trouble, war is just a shot away. But is war a snooze? Well, by the time Enemy at the Gates has run its course — it sure seems that way.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

At times, the sight of reserved English actors slapping, hugging and acting all Russian looks bizarre, though one casting choice is prime: Bob Hoskins has the ideal air of impish menace in the featured role of Khrushchev.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Has little to occupy us once its battle scenes recede. One of those goofy movies where devil-may-care Russian soldiers unwind by playing the balalaika far into the night, it takes itself far more seriously than anyone else will be able to manage.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Enemy at the Gates will pique your interest in the Battle of Stalingrad, but it leaves that interest sadly unsated.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Still, if the movie is mediocre, the history it represents is not. For that correction to our collective Western amnesia, then, Annaud deserves some special award.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

The actors do a pretty good job, though not good enough to sustain 133 minutes.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

It'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.

Variety Derek Elley

Shows a consistent inability to generate any kind of drama when characters open their mouths.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Add a megadose of bombastic James Horner music and a perfunctory love-affair subplot and you have a movie that's its own worst enemy.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Most of the prime goofiness is given over to Vassili and Konig sharpshooting at each other while the battle rages. The movie's a red elephant.

Slate David Edelstein

He (Annaud) doesn't have a clue how to dramatize the romance. Fiennes, whose eyes are extremely close together, stares with a mixture of rage and longing at Weisz, whose eyes are extremely far apart, and the film turns into "The Dating Game" designed by Picasso.