Enemy At The Gates

4 Pages 961 Words

Enemy at the Gates portrays the battle of Staingrad between the Soviet Union and

the invading Nazi Germany from 1942 to 1943 in which at least a million red army

soldiers died. Located north of the Caucasus, deep in southern Russia, and hugging the

Volga river for miles the city of Stalingrad was vital to the Soviet war effort. If the

Germans had taken the city the flow of vital supplies from the mineral rich Caucasus to

the north of Russia and the Ural Mountains would have been completely severed and the

entire country would have collapsed.

The film opens with the transfer of Soviet troops by train to the front on the banks

of the Volga river. Among them is a young conscript named Vassili Zaitsev, played by

Jude Law, who meets up with a political commissar, named Danilov in a sniper ambush

on several high level Germans. Danilov turns Vassili into a national hero through the

Soviet Red Army propaganda newspaper he runs at the request of the Soviet high

command represented in Stalingrad by Nikita Khrushchev. Vassili and his comrades start

terrorizing the high command of the German Army and the SS by killing several of their

high level officers everyday from their sniper positions the rubble of the bomb damaged

city. So much a treat to the war effort the Germans enlist the help of Major Konig, played

by Ed Harris, a brutal and merciless SS officer best known for his sniper tactics. Vassili

and the Major begin taking swipes at each other through a vast series of deceptions and

ambushes. At the same time both Vassili and Danilov fall in love with a young female

soldier name Tania which causes a serious riff between the two former comrades. The

situation becomes self destructive when the Major murders a young boy who befriended

Vassili, sending him into a rage in which he vows to kill Major Konig. Tania is then

wounded while trying to evacuate the boys...