Enemy at the Gates
Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, 2001
Staring Jude Law, Ed Harris, Joseph Fiennes
I have seen many war films like saving private ryan,Apocalypse Now ,All Quiet on the Western Front,Schindler's List,Platoon,The Bridge on the River Kwai,and there are 100 more but the movie i am about to discuss is not one of top films in war genre but a good war film Enemy at the gates.The movie is partially based on Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad, which describes the events surrounding the Battle of Stalingrad from 1942–1943. It is based on a duel mentioned in the book that developed between the legendary Soviet sniper Vasily Grigoryevich Zaitsev and his German counterpart, Major Erwin König, as they stalk each other during the battle. The movie is also partially based on the book War of the Rats
The main plot of this story is
The movie opens with Vassily stalking and shooting a wolf in the frozen Russian countryside and then quickly moves to his being drafted and put on a troop train to Stalingrad. The scene is bleak as the raw recruits leave the train and get into boats to cross the river to Stalingrad. In the water they immediately come under fire from the German artillery but face certain death from the guns of the Soviet Army if they turn back. Once inside the demoralized and besieged city, Vassily puts his shooting skills to good use. Danilov quickly sees Vassily's potential as a morale builder and convinces his superiors to utilize Vassily as a sniper and the rest of the story is A Russian sniper befriends an Army writer and the writer writes about the sniper's accomplishments in WWII. They run into problems when they both fall for the same girl. As they continue to fight and write a German sniper hunts down the Russian.then Vassili Zaitsev,takes down German officers one by one, thus, destroying German morale and boosting Russian morale. The Germans send in a Major sniperer, hoping to take care of Vassili who hides dangerously behind enemy lines. There is a small romance between Vassili and a local woman in the town they're in. As the Germans close in on Stalingrad, the last hope for the world, the Russians must use everything they have to survive.
The main thing that is considered is technical values of this film cinematography and settings are used very effectively to convey the harsh and brutal conditions that residents and members of both armies had to endure as they coped with the brutal Russian winter and the all out devastation of modern urban warfare.
This a very good war film and a watchable film inspired by real events
