Mandalay Pictures Ed Harris stars as
Nazi sniper Koenig in "Enemy at the Gates."
By Ryan Joe
Daily Bruin Contributor
“Enemy at the Gates,” directed by Jean-Jacques
Annaud, is a Western shoot-out set within the battlefield backdrop
of World War II.
“Enemy” works as pure entertainment, an engaging
cat-and-mouse duel between two snipers: the Russian hero Vassili
Zaitsev (Jude Law) versus the Nazi villain Major Koenig (Ed
Harris).
The film would work even better if the plot machine
wouldn’t occasionally jam itself with a chop-shop love story
or its heavy handed psychological sketch. These clunky subplots are
monkey wrenches that bring the otherwise tense and concise film to
a grinding halt.
The German invasion of Stalingrad serves as the setting for the
central conflict between Koenig and Zaitsev. Koenig is confident
that he will, in time and with effort, kill Zaitsev. Zaitsev,
lacking in confidence, agrees with Koenig.
Why do the Germans bother to single out the solitary sniper
Zaitsev? Throughout the course of the war Zaitsev has been publicly
hailed, due to the machinations of the propagandist Danilov (Joseph
Fiennes), as a Russian super soldier.
Danilov publishes and records, with the feisty fervor of a child
counting Christmas presents, the number of Germans Zaitsev shoots.
In response, the top German sniper, Major Koenig emerges to squelch
Zaitsev’s fire. Ultimately, the death of Zaitsev would not be
so much a tactical victory, but an ideological one.
Annaud skims the surface of issues such as the impact of sudden
fame, as well as the public influence of propaganda. These
intriguing topics, however, are half-hearted as Annaud never delves
into them very deeply.
Zaitsev, for instance, occasionally expresses his self-doubt in
a few isolated lines of dialogue that seem, at best, somewhat
forced, written only to maintain Annaud’s psychological
arc.
Ultimately, the moments in which the snipers are not on the
hunt, or on the run, lag. Zaitsev’s self-doubt could have
been an interesting factor in “Enemy’s” war-torn
equation if it were developed efficiently; it’s not and so
Zaitsev’s arc detracts from the film as a whole.
The fundamental conflict of the film is the duel between Zaitsev
and Koenig ““ not the one between Zaitsev and his private
inhibitions, and certainly not between Zaitsev and Danilov.
For all intents and purposes, Danilov should have been relegated
to the background as a minor character. The only reason he
isn’t is because of the rather dull and predictable love
triangle, regurgitated straight from the bowels of Hollywood,
between Zaitsev, Danilov and the Jewish woman Tania (Rachel
Weisz).
The love subplot occupies the film, it would seem, because
Hollywood production values require a Hollywood love story.
“Enemy” would have greatly benefited had the particular
story angle, and all its sappy mushiness, been singled out and
immediately shot down.
The film was inspired by a true story and according to Annaud,
there was indeed a woman who fell in love with Zaitsev. Maybe so,
but in this film, the woman is only a distraction.
Still, “Enemy” is not a bad movie. Perhaps all of
the fierce criticism stems from the fact that the heavy and dull
baggage of the subplots slightly undermines the tense atmosphere
provided by the essence of the film: ““ the duel between
Zaitsev and Koenig.
The scenes that actually involve the snipers are as tense as an
itchy trigger finger. Both Zaitsev and Koenig are top of their
class; their lives rest upon the accuracy of a single well-placed
bullet.
As the two prowl around the war-scarred terrain, there is a
sense of awe, not only for the sheer precision of the
snipers’ marksmanship, but also for their strategy. The
snipers set up shop-store dummies as decoys or mask their shots by
shooting in sync with background explosions.
Harris’s Koenig is by far the most interesting character
in the film. He is the professional personified and his methods, in
order to kill Zaitsev, are chillingly logical and brutally
unscrupulous. Koenig does what he has to do to get the job done.
Morals aren’t even a side thought.
This is a problem with many films ““ the villains are much
more intriguing than the heroes are. Law does an acceptable job as
Zaitsev who, strangely, is not as well developed as Koenig.
Still, “Enemy at the Gates” is very good when it
doesn’t lag. And while the subplots gum up the works, they
are merely the subplots. “Enemy” isn’t as sure of
a shot as the snipers it portrays, however. When the film does hit
its target, it is, at the very least, close to a
bull’s-eye.
FILM: “Enemy at the Gates” is now
playing in theaters nationwide.