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Enemy at the Gates

April 22, 2014
Film Reviews
11 Comments

Enemy At the Gates 01 Jude Law, Ed Harris, Rachel Weisz, Joseph Fiennes, Bob Hoskins, Ron Perlman, Eva Mattes, Gabriel Thomson, Matthias Habich, Sophie Rois, Ivan Shvedoff
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

Enemy At the Gates 02 Jude Law, Ed Harris, Rachel Weisz, Joseph Fiennes, Bob Hoskins, Ron Perlman, Eva Mattes, Gabriel Thomson, Matthias Habich, Sophie Rois, Ivan Shvedoff

Red and White

February 5, 2011
Film Reviews
1 Comment


Red and White: After his family is brutally murdered Thomas joins the army and is placed in a platoon that learn to ignore their differences and come together to fight for independence. With two training montages and nothing but character building in the first 40 minutes you start to think you’re watching the wrong film – then BOOM – the frontline reaches them. The action scenes are gritty and realistic, showing the best and worst in soldiers. You’d be forgiven for thinking that the final ambush sequence is straight out of Hollywood, and the film’s punctuated with some sweet gunfights and quality stealth kills with knives and machetes. Set in Indonesia, it gives you a good background on the history in that part of the world – although it doesn’t paint the Dutch in favourable light – razing villages etc. The films feels like it’s cut short at the end, but saves it from needlessly going beyond the 110 minute mark. The final product is a proud/sentimental national war film like any other, with more emphasis on the story than action. Recommended for War Film fans.

Score: 6/10