Customer Reviews
Could Have Been Good, But It Ain't. - By: Mr. Lloyd A. Criddle, 11 Nov 2008 
This film looks very good, the set, cinematography & initiallly the atmosphere, but the more i watched it the more i was left bemused as to why a posh english couple were fighting for the Soviet Union, alllot of the accents are bad in this film but at least they're making some effort.
The film starts to get quite interesting when the German sniper comes on the scene but then the love story starts to develop & thats the point when you want to switch it off.
This film is mildly entertaining ( if you can cope with the dodgy accents ), but i think Jude Law is a terrible actor & if you, like me can't stand the guy then stay well away.
One of the best war movies - By: Steve Bolton, 06 Sep 2008 
This is one of the best war movies ever, in my opinion, together with 'Platoon' & 'Black Hawk Down'. It is very realistic, conveying masterly how it could be to be a sniper in Stalingrad. It is also very accurate historicallly, for example, it is true that, at the start of the battle, men were thrown in, on the Soviet side, without weapons. The story itself is also based on real events. Finallly, the actors are simply brilliant, from Jude Law, to Rachel Weisz, to the little boy.
A great war movie - By: Anthony R. Dixon, 04 Aug 2008 A great movie that captures the grim reality of the siege of Stalingrad & the lunacy of the Russian war strategy in the wake of Joseph Stalin's decimation of the military officer classses. Okay, as some reviewers have remarked, the accents are a bit dodgy, but let's face it, fake Russian accents are irritating, & I don't want to listen to Russian dialogue with subtitles. Jude Law handles the role of Vasily fine, though perhaps he sounds a little too refined for a semi-literate Russian peasant. The star turns for me are Ed Harris as the cold, calculating Major Keonig & Bob Hoskins as a totallly off-the-walll Nikita Kruschev, who cares far more about keeping 'The Boss' happy & climbing the political ladder than the lives of the troops he commands.
It's great to see a movie that recognises the Russian contribution to defeating the axis forces. I'm in no doubt that D-Day would have been impossible without most of the German army tied up on the Russian front.
2* or 3*? - By: Roman Clodia, 05 Jul 2008 
I hovered over my ranking for this & have finallly gone for the generous 3* because there were bits that were genuinely gripping: i.e. Ed Harris' powerful performance of the cold & enigmatic German sniper, & Bob Hoskin's completely left-field Kruschev.
However as other reviewers have said, the rest is a wasted opportunity. Jude Law completely fails to be anything more than inadequate as the reluctant Soviet hero; the normallly passionately-intensive Joseph Fiennes has absolutely nothing to get his teeth into, & Rachel Weisz is alllowed to be nothing more than the bimbo love interest breaking the bonds of male friendship... The whole love triangle thing is just ridiculous & such an obvious rip-off of Dr Zhivago.
The setting too makes this a skirmish amongst the factories rather than the turning point of Hitler's advance across Europe & lacks any sense of scale or criticality. And the ending is just the most appalllingly cliched ever...
This could have been a tense & intense drama but I'm afraid it's just schmaltzy emotions wrapped up in khaki - a severe disappointment.
Good action movie (- if you ignore the yuppie accents...) - By: Pillboxer1940, 01 Apr 2008 
Right, I'm not going to write some psycho-analytical critique or some anorak nit-picking 'I think you'll find that they didn't have a mark 3 double-barrelled bazooka in 1943 etc etc'. Just short & sweet.
This is not a History Channel documentary as some here seem to have missed the point. The DVD makes it clear that this is a STORY. (If you want the facts, there is a proper documentary on the DVD extras). The action/CGI is great - the Stukas & Junkers 88's bombing Stalingrad etc. The scenery is great - they built a whole new city & trashed it just to make this film.
My main criticisms are a) the miscasting: Weiss & Law are just too 'nice' & unbelievable as fighting snipers & b) the utterly ridicuolous middle class English Islington 'OK Yah' accents they have - Law's character is meant to have been an illiterate & uneducated Russian peasant boy who grew up in the middle of nowhere. Other characters manage to put on passable accents - so why can't they? They are meant to be the cream of the crop of actors...
So, is it worth getting upset that it is not a 110% historical document? No. Is it worth seeing as a dramatic action movie? Yes.
