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| Enemy At The Gates [2001] | ![Enemy At The Gates [2001]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41DJ829R88L._SL160_.jpg)
 enlarge | Director: Jean-jacques Annaud
Actors: Jude Law, Ed Harris, Rachel Weisz, Joseph Fiennes, Bob Hoskins
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Category: Video
List Price: £5.99
Buy Used: £0.01
You Save: £5.98 (100%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  61 reviews
Sales Rank: 2196
Format: Dolby, Pal, Surround Sound
Languages: English (Original Language), German (Original Language), Russian (Original Language)
Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
Media: VHS Tape
Running Time: 131 minutes
Number Of Items: 1
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.3 x 4.2 x 1.1
EAN: 5011531901754
ASIN: B00005NONS
Theatrical Release Date: March 16, 2001
Release Date: November 19, 2001
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.co.uk Review
Enemy at the Gates opens with a pivotal event of World War II--the German invasion of Stalingrad--recreated in Saving Private Ryan-like epic scale as ill-trained Russian soldiers face German attack or punitive execution if they flee from the enemy's advance. Director Jean-Jacques Annaud captures this madness with urgent authenticity, creating a massive context for a more intimate battle waged amidst the city's ruins. Embellished from its basis in fact, the story shifts to an intense cat-and-mouse game between a Russian shepherd raised to iconic fame, and a German marksman whose skill is unmatched in its lethal precision. Vassily Zaitzev (Jude Law) has been sniping Nazis one bullet at a time, while the German Major Konig (Ed Harris) has been assigned to kill Vassily and spare Hitler from further embarrassment. There's love in this war, too, as Vassily connects with a woman soldier (Rachel Weisz), but she is also loved by Danilov (Joseph Fiennes), the Soviet officer who promotes his friend Vassily as Russia's much-needed hero. This romantic rivalry lends marginal interest to the central plot, but it's not enough to make this a classic war film. Instead it's a taut, well-made suspense thriller isolated within an epic battle, and although Annaud and cowriter Alain Godard (drawing from William Craig's book and David L Robbins' novel The War of the Rats) fail to connect the parallel plots with any lasting impact, the production is never less than impressive. Highly conventional but handled with intelligence and superior craftsmanship, this is warfare as strategic entertainment, without compromising warfare as a man-made hell on Earth. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com On the DVD: with a choice of Dolby 5.1 or DTS the sound is suitably spectacular (James Horner's Prokofiev-inspired score comes up well amid whizzing bullets and explosions), while the 2.35:1 anamorphic picture makes the best of the epic battle sequences. "Through the Crosshairs" is a standard 20-minute behind-the-scenes documentary, which is complemented by "Inside Enemy at the Gates", a 15-minute montage of interviews with the stars and director. There's also a 25-minute French-made documentary (with English subtitles) about the real battle that includes a short interview with the real Vassily Zaitsev. Eight brief deleted scenes can be played separately or neatly inserted into the movie by pressing Enter when the gun sight icon appears on screen. The commentary by director Jean-Jacques Annaud is as informative as might be expected from a director who always seems passionate about his film projects. Storyboards, posters, a trailer and filmographies round out an excellent disc package. --Mark Walker
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| Customer Reviews: Read 56 more reviews...
 One of the best war movies September 6, 2008
This is one of the best war movies ever, in my opinion, together with 'Platoon' and 'Black Hawk Down'. It is very realistic, conveying masterly how it could be to be a sniper in Stalingrad. It is also very accurate historically, for example, it is true that, at the start of the battle, men were thrown in, on the Soviet side, without weapons. The story itself is also based on real events. Finally, the actors are simply brilliant, from Jude Law, to Rachel Weisz, to the little boy.
A great war movie August 4, 2008
A great movie that captures the grim reality of the siege of Stalingrad and the lunacy of the Russian war strategy in the wake of Joseph Stalin's decimation of the military officer classses. Okay, as some reviewers have remarked, the accents are a bit dodgy, but let's face it, fake Russian accents are irritating, and I don't want to listen to Russian dialogue with subtitles. Jude Law handles the role of Vasily fine, though perhaps he sounds a little too refined for a semi-literate Russian peasant. The star turns for me are Ed Harris as the cold, calculating Major Keonig and Bob Hoskins as a totally off-the-wall Nikita Kruschev, who cares far more about keeping 'The Boss' happy and climbing the political ladder than the lives of the troops he commands.
It's great to see a movie that recognises the Russian contribution to defeating the axis forces. I'm in no doubt that D-Day would have been impossible without most of the German army tied up on the Russian front.
 2* or 3*? July 5, 2008
I hovered over my ranking for this and have finally gone for the generous 3* because there were bits that were genuinely gripping: i.e. Ed Harris' powerful performance of the cold and enigmatic German sniper, and Bob Hoskin's completely left-field Kruschev.
However as other reviewers have said, the rest is a wasted opportunity. Jude Law completely fails to be anything more than inadequate as the reluctant Soviet hero; the normally passionately-intensive Joseph Fiennes has absolutely nothing to get his teeth into, and Rachel Weisz is allowed to be nothing more than the bimbo love interest breaking the bonds of male friendship... The whole love triangle thing is just ridiculous and such an obvious rip-off of Dr Zhivago.
The setting too makes this a skirmish amongst the factories rather than the turning point of Hitler's advance across Europe and lacks any sense of scale or criticality. And the ending is just the most appallingly cliched ever...
This could have been a tense and intense drama but I'm afraid it's just schmaltzy emotions wrapped up in khaki - a severe disappointment.
Good action movie (- if you ignore the yuppie accents...) April 1, 2008
Right, I'm not going to write some psycho-analytical critique or some anorak nit-picking 'I think you'll find that they didn't have a mark 3 double-barrelled bazooka in 1943 etc etc'. Just short and sweet.
This is not a History Channel documentary as some here seem to have missed the point. The DVD makes it clear that this is a STORY. (If you want the facts, there is a proper documentary on the DVD extras). The action/CGI is great - the Stukas and Junkers 88's bombing Stalingrad etc. The scenery is great - they built a whole new city and trashed it just to make this film.
My main criticisms are a) the miscasting: Weiss and Law are just too 'nice' and unbelievable as fighting snipers and b) the utterly ridicuolous middle class English Islington 'OK Yah' accents they have - Law's character is meant to have been an illiterate and uneducated Russian peasant boy who grew up in the middle of nowhere. Other characters manage to put on passable accents - so why can't they? They are meant to be the cream of the crop of actors...
So, is it worth getting upset that it is not a 110% historical document? No. Is it worth seeing as a dramatic action movie? Yes.
audio anorak info December 7, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
just a note to let all you audio anoraks out there with dts playback on your home cinema gear that this disc is one of the very few uk dts discs to have close to full bit-rate audio off its dts track, around double the usual dts rate. i work at a posh audio outlet and when demonstrating all our cinema gear we use this and its audio track is staggering, it gets a sale almost every time !
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