Efficient and Effective

Jean-Jacques Annaud begins his latest film, Enemy At the Gates, with a vision of the 1942-43 siege of Stalingrad as hell on earth that puts the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan to shame--not because it's necessarily more first-person visceral or true to historical fact, but because it's framed in a far more compelling mixture of story and character. We follow naive, provincial Red Army footsoldier Vassili Zaitzev (Jude Law) straight off the train and into the heat of battle, after a brief but dreadful river journey during which his peers' main choice is to stay on board their boats and be shot by German fighter planes or jump into the water and be shot by their own commanders. On the "streets" of the chaotically demolished city, meanwhile, political officers distributing an ever-diminishing supply of rifles and bullet-clips constantly scream this not-exactly-encouraging mantra: "The one with the rifle shoots. The one without the rifle follows. When the one with the rifle is killed, the one behind him picks up the rifle and shoots."

It'll be ten more minutes before Vassili finally gets himself a rifle. But when he does, we -- and he -- make an extraordinary discovery: This little shepherd boy from the Urals is not just a helpless target, but a potential predator of innate and deadly skill. He will spend the rest of the battle in the Red Army's sniper division, picking Germans off like the wolves he once poached as a boy -- and it's his human-sized story, in all its emotional immediacy and moral complexity, which will turn the epic canvas of one of World War II's bloodiest campaigns into a surprisingly intimate drama of hunter-on-hunter strategy, luck and sheer, desperate strength of will.

In the course of this first engagement, Vassili hooks up with Danilov (Joseph Fiennes), a political officer who immediately recognizes the propaganda value of Vassili's triumph. So he builds Vassili up as an instant legend, dangling tales of his exploits as a sniper in front of their dispirited comrades. And it's this projected image of Vassili -- not the often lonely, occasionally terrified real person behind it -- which eventually causes the Nazis to set their own hunter on the man hunting them. They send for their top sharpshooter, aristocrat-turned-soldier Major Konig (Ed Harris), and give him his orders: Get Vassili, no matter what the cost.

"It's the very essence of class struggle," Danilov tells Vassili, his eyes sparkling. But Vassili is becoming increasingly disenchanted with being Danilov's pet project, especially when he suspects there's no way he can possibly beat Konig. After all, as he tells fellow sniper Tania (Rachel Weisz), "in the forest, the wolf lives for three years, the donkey for nine." Whether noble or peasant, he and Konig are wolves to Danilov and the educated, beautiful Tania's donkeys--useless, except in one highly specific situation. And one way or another, both of them can feel their alotted three years coming to an end . . .

The acting is uniformly wonderful, with special mention going to the weary, elegant Harris, as well as to Bob Hoskins' brutal supporting turn as Red Army damage control expert Nikita Kruschev. Law and Fiennes, two thespians often -- rightly -- accused of coasting by on their rather frightening good looks, hit a complex and flawless series of notes, while Weisz proves particularly adept at simultaneously suggesting charismatic innocence and angry sorrow; it's essential that we understand why both these very different men could fall in love with her simultaneously, and she pulls it off with aplomb.

Based on William Craig's book, Annaud and co-screenwriter Alain Godard have created a remarkably efficient and effective movie which uses Vassili and Konig's near-mythic battle of wits to put history in its proper context: Though issues of politics and philosophy are touched upon, this is a film about the people inside the uniforms -- a story of human beings under pressure, forced by circumstance to make choices both impulsive and, on occasion, heroic. It's also the new year's single most satisfying movie experience thus far.