Sniping In Russia
A Russian and German sniper duke it out during the Battle of Stalingrad, at a time when the Nazi army was at its strongest. As Russia sustains heavy casualties, all citizens of Russia are made to join the war in an attempt to push back the invading Nazis. One of these Russians is a young man named Vassili Zaitsev. After escaping near death just getting to the battle, Vassili quickly sees dozens of his comrades fall to their deaths as the overpower Nazi army unleashes a fury of bullets. Vassili manages to survive along with a political officer and writer, Commisar Danilov, played by Joseph Fiennes. Danilov manages to procure a rifle at the time he and Vassili meet, but he’s a poor shot — he then witnesses Vassili drop several Nazi soldiers, including an officer, and the legend of Vassili is henceforth born.
Danilov begins to build a propaganda machine, making Vassili out to be something more than just a man. Vassili’s shooting skills are in fact very good though, probably the best Russia had at their disposal. As his kill count increases and the legend of Vassili grows, inspiring the Russians to fight harder, the Nazis realize they must put an end to this growing menace. They unleash Ed Harris’ character, an expert sniper named Major Konig to track Vassili down and kill him. Meanwhile, both Vassili and Danilov fall for Rachel Weisz’s character, Tania Chernova. After Tania chooses Vassili, Danilov is heart broken and the friendship between he and Vassili suffers. The back and forth battle between Major Konig and Vassili is the crux of the plot however, and makes for some entertaining, if somewhat unrealistic sniper battles.
Overall, Enemy At the Gates is well worth a watch. I personally had two problems with the story however that really keep this from being what I would consider a great war movie. For one, I didn’t really care for the Danilov character, not because of poor casting or acting, but just because I thought that whole relationship was unnecessary. Additionally, the romantic angle with Tania got in the way of what I think the film really excelled at, war. Nevertheless, Enemy At the Gates is thought to be by many as one of the best war movies in the last decade, so be sure to see it for yourself if you haven’t.
Blu-ray In Their Crosshairs
Enemy At the Gates on Blu-ray contains a few extra features, although all of them are old and in SD, with the exception of the trailer which is in HD. In terms of image quality, I wasn’t all that impressed with the film actually; there is frankly just a lot of grain in many scenes, primarily in the background. The colors are also fairly tame and don’t really pop off the screen, they looked a little subdued in other words. That said, a lot of the movie does look good, but I was never truly impressed with the quality. As for the sonic experience, Paramount utilizes a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track. The audio is good and captures the sounds of war well.
For the extra features, expect a fairly typical collection. Included are:
-Through the Crosshairs – This feature is probably from the original DVD release and is in SD. It runs about twenty minutes and is basically a really long commerical for the movie with the actors and the crew talking about their roles and basically how good of a movie they made. Plenty of footage from the film is included.
-Inside Enemy At the Gates – A fifteen minute feature in SD that is actually fairly similar to the first feature. More thoughts and anecdotes from the cast and crew are included along with footage of the film and some production footage, too.
-Deleted Scenes – Nine deleted scenes totaling ten minutes here, all in SD.
-Trailer in HD
Overall, this is a somewhat disappointing Blu-ray release as the video quality just didn’t really impress me and the extra features don’t suggest that a whole lot of effort was put into this release.
Let’s get to the summary…
