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| Movies,
jerry carpenter,
02:00:00,
05 April 2001 |
Rating: F2
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Oh boy, on paper did this look good. A post ‘Private Ryan’ war film set during the battle of Stalingrad that focuses on a grudge match between two crack shot snipers. Speilberg’s war film reinvigorated the genre by applying hyper kinetic camerawork, gross-out visceral horror, and a thankfully restrained performance from Tom Hanks. It also had the most amazing sniper action, with Barry Pepper’s intense zen-like marksman the highlight of the fresh faced cannon fodder in Hank’s pack. So this film with TWO snipers, and potentially piles of atrocity should be staggering eh ?
Aw shit, it’s actually really boring. Like the German invasion of Stalingrad could be made boring ? That’d take real cock-up film making. It’s not even Jude Law’s fault, and in most film’s he’s in, it is. Of course Jude is guilty of a real miss-fire accent here, he plays the Russian peasant-turned-super sniper like he’s buying a bag of chips in Purley, but it’s not what spoils the film. It’s not Rachel Weiss’s fault either, she’s her usual bubbly self, but kind of lost playing a plucky Russian translator turned wannabe sniper. Joseph Fiennes, well it’s not his fault either, and he’s got lovely eyes. Bob Hoskins makes a preposterous Kruschev, hamming it up a touch too far, but still it’s not him I’d point the finger at.
Basically this film has been written, shot and edited with all the thought that one might put into say, the cooking of a tasty Pot Noodle. The dialogue is dull and cliché ridden, and not in the funny quotable way. The story is a right old mess, starting off ably enough with Law’s solider shoved into the blood-and-mud drenched frontline meeting up with Fienne’s propaganda officer and getting a job as the Hun-sniping hero of the Russian Forces. But then they bring in Weiss as the girl who’ll come between our boys, and the film forgets it’s weighty subject matter in favour of a trite love triangle.
When Ed Harris’s German master sniper turns up to pop a cap in Jude’s head things should spark up, but who’d have thought a cat-and-mouse sniper game amongst the admittedly fantastic grim locations could be so dull. Two guys looking through telescopic lenses at each other for ages just doesn’t make great cinema unfortunately, especially when it’s broken up with such a dumb love story. It really wants to be a big film about a huge event contrasting brilliantly with a tender human story at it’s centre. It really wants an Oscar, at least for the cinematography or something. But I don’t think this’ll even make the list at the ‘Blockbuster’ awards it’s that bad. War is hell. This was worse.
UK rating:
15
US rating:
PG-13
Dir - Jean Jaques Annaund
Jude Law, Joseph Fiennes, Rachel Weiss
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