Enemy at the Gates (Blu-ray)

All right, time for a hard pivot away from sci-fi, horror, epic franchises, and so on, and take a little trip back to WWII for a jaunt. Enemy At the Gates has always struck me as one of the more under appreciated modern films in the genre. At its core, it’s a story that amounts to two legendary snipers duking it out in the midst of The Battle of Stalingrad. The film is populated by a variety of memorable characters, a measured, yet energetic pace, and a surprisingly effective series of subplots that never feel forced or too divorced from the core narrative. There are many thrilling moments of incredible tension between Jude Law’s Vasily Zaytsev and Ed Harris’s Erwin König as they are matching wits and rifles in chaos of war. It isn’t the most gory of films, which is fine, but I do think it may have benefited from a little less overall sterility, dirty faces and bandaged soldiers or not. There wasn’t a weak performance to be seen, and overall, I consistently find myself confused at why this one doesn’t get mentioned more. Any other fans?