Enemy at the Gates
Enemy At The Gates: Stalingrad is being attacked by the Nazis, and after a Russian sniper terrorises the Germans, they send their top marksman from a Berlin Sniper School in for an epic sharpshooting duel. How could a film about a sniper battle be so boring? There’s only a handful of kills and the rest is hammy, over-sentimental, schmaltzy war boringness and distracting “human element” side-story shite. The cast are confusing as shit too: there’s English people with cockney accents playing Russians, American’s doing German “Vith and Ak-scent”, and Ron Perlman (American) trying an English accent in order to fit in with ‘team Russia’ – accent-mageddon. I’m also pretty sure that no Russian ever spoke about “tea and a biscuit”. The look, feel and tone of the movie all reek of something from the 1950s – including bad acting, a poor script, the worst / most awkward love scene of the 2000’s, and a terrible “classic cinema” score that tells you exactly when you should be excited, crying etc. This is a film that starts off like Private Ryan on a budget and goes downhill from there. Utter war-pants.
Score: 2/10
Paragraph Film Reviews 
I saw this movie and I agree. It basically was the stupidest war movie ever. The worst part is that it took a lot of historical liberties with Vassily Zaitsev, who was a real Soviet sniper during the war. The lesson the movie taught me was that the reason the USSR won the war was because Jude Law killed Ed Harris.
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Absolutely, I (not to sound mental) am quite fascinated by snipers and realised pretty quickly that this wasn’t gunning to be a normal movie. Can’t wait to see a movie based on Simo Häyhä!
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I also love how you knew who was Russian and who was German in this movie. They both spoke English, but Russians spoke English with English accents, while Germans (I’m guessing how the movie interpreted regional German dialects) spoke with either straight American accents (like Ed Harris) or very poorly-faked German accents, like the general who briefed Ed Harris as to why he should take Jude Law out.
Ultimately, what this movie served to be was an inspiration for some of the levels in the Call of Duty series. The Call of Duty series was pretty loaded with movie references, and I’m guessing they assumed the only movie anyone has ever seen about the Soviets in World War II was Enemy at the Gates as Call of Duty, Call of Duty 2, and Call of Duty: World at War all contained Enemy at the Gates references in the USSR levels. They even make you a sniper in all of the Call of Duty games where you get to be a Russian!
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Finally, someone else that is as irate about bad accents as me! I hear everything you’re saying, just can’t believe that this is considered a ‘go to’ War film… utter pants!
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Reblogged this on affiliatorslink.
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Thanks for the reblog and for stopping through.
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Saw this film with my dad a couple of years ago – dire!
Anyway, I really enjoy what you do here and I’ve nominated you for a Liebster Award. If you’re interested, go to:
https://paragraphfilmreviews.com/
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Urgh, I messed that up!
The link is – http://www.bensbasement.co.uk/2014/04/bens-basement-gets-liebster-award.html
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Hi man. Thanks for the nomination – don’t have internet at home just now but will get round to this when I can!
Cheers,
Paul
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I remember seeing this years ago, and really disliking it. I don’t remember it being a 2/10, though. But yeah, still pretty bad. And, ugh, that sex scene was cringe-inducing.
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That scene will be stuck in my brain for a looooooong ass time. Absolutely horrific. Don’t think this has aged well at all.
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