|
| |
While I was expecting a Saving Private Ryan and
was anticipating a huge Stalingrad war scene, I got a movie about snipers and
propaganda. I enjoyed each of the performances, especially by Gabriel Thomson's
as the child spy. However, I found many of
the scenes, especially the sniper duels, to be filled with the same old
Hollywood formulas we've seen before, even in comedies.
The romance plot was absolutely ridiculous and
the romance itself overly erotic, disgusting, unnecessary. Rachel Weisz did give
her best performance, that is, in comparison to her work in The Mummy. Ed Harris
was truly fascinating in his role and very interesting, but Law's character got
boring after a while. He played too much of a simpleton for me. War is chaotic
and frantic, and for a war movie, everything seemed to fall into place too
perfectly and orderly.
The movie offers nothing new to the war genre. It
is most certainly not Schindler's List or Saving Private Ryan in quality,
feeling, or power. While the Spielberg films where almost completely devastating
and brutally true, Enemy at the Gates is a lighter version of them both with
more than enough glimpses of happiness. This is a movie about the most raunchy,
disgusting battle that earth has ever seen, where people ate horses and dead
soldiers, but it didn’t take it far enough away from the snipers’ duel to
actually give us the experience of that battle. The only raw element comes from
the ugly Stalingrad look, which I loved. Also, the movie had a flavor of
everything, but it was too short to embellish on each of the points it made, and
it was difficult to identify emotionally with anyone other than Thomson's
character Sasha. I hoped to see his role flourish out more, but instead the
story cut to the romance subplot.
-- Mike, USA.
|
