C+

Jean-Jacques Annaud’s World War II epic is an extremely frustrating film. Nearly half of the picture–some magnificent large-scale battle sequences and several taut episodes depicting snipers stalking each other in a devastated urban landscape–is gripping cinema, genuinely harrowing and suspenseful. Unfortunately, the remainder is composed of lame cliches, cardboard characterizations, stilted dialogue and generally mediocre acting from miscast performers. “Enemy at the Gates” certainly has impressive moments, but they’re buried in a rubble of melodramatic excess that would have seemed corny in a film made while the war was actually being waged. (One hospital scene at the end goes so far as to mimic a famous shot from “Gone With the Wind,” bathing the entire composition in carefully-arranged rays of light to point up the important figures within it.) The result ultimately reinforces the impression left by Annaud’s recent IMAX picture, “Wings of Courage,” which took a similarly powerful story–of a 1930s pilot walking his way out of the snow-covered Andes–and encrusted it in schmaltz and crass overemphasis: this is a director who’s got well-developed visual instincts, but not much narrative sense.

The script, based (very loosely, it would appear) on actual events, is set at the fiercely-contested battle of Stalingrad, one of the three Allied victories of 1942-43 (the others being El Alamein and Midway) that marked a turning point in the war. The action begins as the Russian defenders are being routed by the seemingly inevitable Nazi advance; new recruits are being shipped across the Volga and issued only one rifle for two men to serve essentially as cannon fodder against German artillery and massed formations. One of the newcomers is Vassili Zaitsev (Jude Law), a shepherd’s son who survives the initial charge and shows himself an expert marksman in the sight of a pinned-down Soviet political officer, Danilov (Joseph Fiennes) by blithely killing five enemy soldiers, including a high-ranking general. Danilov takes it upon himself to bolster morale by transferring Zaitsev to the sniper unit and trumpeting his achievements in the papers; the effort is enthusiastically embraced by blustery, merciless Nikita Khruschev (Bob Hoskins), who’s recently arrived from Moscow to take charge of the city’s defense. Before long, Zaitsev is a celebrity, and to deal with the threat his reputation poses, the Germans send in their best sharpshooter, Major Konig (Ed Harris) to eliminate him. While he and Zaitsev try to kill one another in a series of cat-and-mouse efforts, Zaitsev and Danilov become involved in a romantic triangle involving a pretty Soviet Jewess, Tania (Rachel Weisz)–a circumstance that will eventually lead to duplicity between the friends and a final act of self-sacrifice. There’s also a subplot featuring Sacha (Gabriel Marshall-Thomson), a young neighbor of Tania’s who serves as a double agent for the Soviets, getting close to Konig in order to extract information on his plans.

Now all of this has some basis in fact. There was, of course, a battle at Stalingrad, and a sniper named Vassili Zaitsev. There was also, of course, a Nikita Khruschev. And there were German snipers, too (though the existence of a Major Konig is more speculative). But the remainder of the plot–which the scripters attribute to legends that grew up around the sharpshooter, and may or may not have had any factual basis–is, however true historically, simply not convincing cinematically. Simply put, the friendship-that-turns-into-rivalry between Zaitsev and Danilov is a hokey bit of business only made worse by its catalyst, the figure of Tania, who never seems remotely credible. Nor is the subplot involving Sacha anything more than a device to evoke the crudest sort of sentiment. Unhappily, a great deal of the more than two-hour running time of “Enemy at the Gates” is devoted to these crudely melodramatic elements, delivered in dialogue that’s often so ripe as to be nearly risible.

Nor does the acting salvage this “personal” side of the story. Setting aside the fact that all the Russians speak in a variety of jarring British accents (some, like Eva Mattes, in obviously dubbed voices), most of the performers seem out of place in their roles. Law catches Zaitsev’s naivete and tenderness, but physically his thin, rangy frame really doesn’t suggest a Ukranian peasant. Fiennes joshes and smolders uncomfortably as Danilov, while Weisz is merely amateurish as Tania (the smudges of grime occasionally dabbed on her face never persuade us that she’s in the thick of battle). Hoskins does a standard bully-boy routine as Khruschev, and Marshall-Thomson appears too sweetly-scrubbed and angelic as Sacha. The sole lead actor, in fact, who makes a really positive impression is Harris, whose air of quiet authority and intensity is most effective. There’s also a brief turn from Ron Perlman, as a hard-headed Soviet sniper who has no illusions about the Communist system, that’s right on target.

It’s hardly an accident that the contributions of Harris and Perlman are largely confined to what remain the picture’s saving elements–the (very often wordless) battle sequences. The opening twenty minutes, which depict the Russian troops being sailed across the Volga under heavy German bombardment and their immediate insertion into a hopeless charge under threats from their brutal commanders (a moment that’s reminiscent of the heedless use of manpower that Kubrick savaged even more brilliantly in 1957’s “Paths of Glory”), are extremely well-staged, worthy of comparison to Spielberg’s famous recreation of the Normandy invasion in “Saving Private Ryan.” The later episodes of Zaitsev and Konig tracking one another aren’t quite so visually impressive, but they’re nicely laid out in terms of geography and strategy (apart from one overly-obvious bit involving a series of metal tunnels through which Zaitsev climbs all too loudly), and generate considerable tension. The idea of concentrating on the duel between the two men as a microcosm of the entire battle between Russian tenacity and German efficiency isn’t bad, either. Joseph Vilsmaier made the same sort of choice in his 1992 film “Stalingrad,” focusing (in the style of Samuel Fuller’s 1980 “The Big Red One”) on the experiences on a small group of German troops to evoke the horror of the overall battle.

Vilsmaier, however, didn’t make Annaud’s mistake of resorting to outdated conventions (the ersatz newsreel introduction at the beginning) and hackneyed plot turns to juice up his narrative. (He also captured more effectively the bleak, wintry aspect of the bombed-out city than the French director, for all his visual panache, manages to do.) In the final analysis the strong points of “Enemy at the Gates” are undermined by a script that’s too hokily old-fashioned for its own good and a cast that can’t overcome the creakiness of its twists and turns. Fifty minutes of good stuff in a movie that’s 130 minutes long just aren’t enough.