Enemy at the Gates

I always figured that when those pig-fuckers in Hollywood finally get around to making a movie about my life, they would want to concentrate on the interesting stuff and leave out the boring shit. Nobody wants to watch me jerking off to Confessions of Coed Hookers on Cinemax after Mrs. Filthy goes to bed. But maybe they'd be interested in seeing that one time when I threw rocks at those stupid neighbor kids who were trying to knock a robin's nest out of a tree. Give the audience the heroics and then get the fuck out. Quit hanging around just to use up film.

But I guess they're brains have all gone to shit from all the blow-jobs they get from skanky teenagers who they've promised to make into stars. As Enemy at the Gates proves, they're just interested in taking what could be an exciting, tense story and padding it with more fluff than my fifteen year-old niece's bra that night she went on a date with that oily kid in the Trans Am.

Enemy at the Gates tells the story of the Commies resisting the Krauts in Stalingrad, a turning point in Hitler's conquering of Europe. The Soviets are getting their Marxist asses whipped by the Nazis, and can't seem to get their pussy soldiers to happily sacrifice themselves for the good of the cause. The ruthless commie officers (remember, commies are bad, nobody's saying commies are heroes) have to shoot their own soldiers, because they're running away from the Germans. The Soviet's morale is falling faster than Meg Ryan's tits.

In steps Jude Law as Vassili Zeitsev, a peasant from the Urals who happens to be an expert at shooting wolves, a skill which he uses to put holes in the heads of German officers. In one of the movie's better scenes, he saves his own ass and Joseph Fienne's as well. Too bad Law didn't know how annoying Fiennes was going to be for the rest of the movie, because he could have saved everybody a lot of grief by popping one into his skull right then, too.

Fiennes is Danilov, a propaganda officer looking for somebody to make into a hero, and Law fits the bill perfectly. He's modest, tough, and soaks the panties of any woman who prefers men to cucumbers. Fiennes writes up Law's exploits, and he becomes a national treasure.

In between picking off Krauts and answering fan mail, Fiennes and Law both fall in love with Tania (Rachel Weisz, who it turns out, has a great ass, although you hardly get to see it).

The Germans send their own sharpshooter, Major Konig (Ed Harris), to take care of Law and buck up the Nazis so they can finish off those pesky Soviets. Harris and Law then proceed to stare intently at each other through rifle scopes for hours on end, occasionally shooting, just to see if they can shock the people in the movie theater so bad that they piss their pants.

The movie looks fan-fucking-tastic The producers spent a ton of dough on recreating a half-destroyed Stalingrad. Red Square is muddy and filled with dead bodies. The bombed-out tractor factory where Harris and Law do most of their crouching and intent staring is more pock-marked than that oily Trans-Am kid's face. Unfortunately, the director, Jean-Jacques Annaud, is so impressed with his creation that he wants everybody to hang around for about an hour longer than they have to, just to show off his set.

Instead of letting Harris and Law get it over with, he throws in a ton of unnecessary crap, like the "love-triangle" between Law, Fiennes and Weisz. The director needed something to do in between the scenes where Harris and Law try to outfox each other, so he invented this completely unbelievable subplot. Jesus Hotpants Christ, how fucking long would it take any right-minded girl to choose between Law, who is so hot that I practically want to fuck him, and the artist formerly known as Joseph Fiennes? He spends half the movie rubbing his chin and staring off into space, like he's thinking about how much happier he'd be in an episode of Masterpiece Theater.

The World War II subtext is handled with all the delicacy of my retarded cousin Larry playing with the (now dead) rabbit at the home. You mean Jewish people didn't like the Nazis? And Stalin wasn't Mr. Rogers crossed with a big bowl of marshmallows? No fucking shit, Jean-Jacques. We already know this, and we don't need you wasting forty minutes of our lives telling us. It's like the studio told him he could make the movie, but only if it was painfully obvious that everybody except Americans and a handful of Soviets with posh British accents are bloodthirsty assholes.

For no apparent reason, other than a ham-fisted plot device to show us just how terrible the Germans are, Law and Fiennes hang around with the most wholesome and mind-bendingly boring family in all of Stalingrad. The little boy, who looked like he got lost on his way home from playing Oliver Twist in his school play, only exists so he can be killed. We're supposed to be furious at the barbaric Germans, but not having to look at his big eyes and wait for him to hold out a bowl and say, "Sir, more porridge please" was more a relief than anything else.

The scenes where Harris and Law hunt each other are pretty riveting for a while, but in the end they're like an old hooker - the first time it's tight and exciting, but after about the billionth, it's just sloppy and sad, and you can't wait to get it over with. You stop rooting for the good guy and just wish somebody would get his head blown off already so you can go home.

One thing I will say, though, is that if there's one thing the frogs do well it's sex scenes, and Annaud tosses in a great one, just so he won't lose his French Director's card. When Weisz reaches her grubby hand into Law's pants, and they frantically hump amongst the sleeping Russian soldiers, I practically creamed my shorts right there. If I had only known that the next ten minutes of the movie were going to be so dull, I could have locked myself in the bathroom stall to finish the job.

Two Fingers for Enemy at the Gates. It could have been three if it was much shorter. And Five dirty Fingers for Rachel Weisz' grabby hands and wild-eyed orgasms.