The best WWII movie ever made
This is my favourite and in my opinion the best WWII movie. Better than Saving Private Ryan, Pearl Harbor, Fury, Thin Red Line, Letters to Iwo Jima etc.
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MovieChat Forums > Enemy at the Gates (2001) Discussion > The best WWII movie ever made
Better than Saving Private Ryan and Letters from Iwo Jima???? LMAO
First I thought I would say a joke about Sodium and Hydrogen but NaH.
This is a good film, but far from the best WW2 ever.
There are some minor flaws in Enemy at the Gates.
The love triangle really does nothing for the film.
Chuikov was the Soviet general in charge in Stalingrad, Krushchev was a minor figure.
The film gives the impression that the Soviets held a portion of the city, where they could print newspapers and such. This never happened.
There are some minor flaws in Enemy at the Gates.
MINOR??
Where was the 62nd Army? What Division was the main character supposed to be serving in? What Military branch did the main character serve in for 6 years before asking to be reassigned to a Battalion which was being sent to Stalingrad?
Where were the 2 Soviet Air Armies(Fighter and Bomber aircraft) providing Air Support?
Where were the Artillery Regiments and Brigades of the Stalingrad Front?
How were the Axis Armies around the city of Stalingrad defeated?
This movie suggests the Axis soldiers became sick with influenza or something and decided to surrender the city at some point during WW2. This movie is insulting to those who had to fight in this battle and at best is an alternate reality film.
How would Americans react if in "Flags of our Fathers" all of the main characters were incompetent illiterate cattle herders, who were just sent off to the island of Iwo Jima directly from their farms in random groups, with no commanders and no equipment inside random cargo ships and then loaded onto rafts with brutal Military Police guards? The main characters then all get killed 10 minutes into the movie and the Japanese just decide to surrender the island because there was a Typhoon.
..((Godless Communist against Religious Kleptocracy)).. share
I agree. Excellent points.
The filmmakers obviously weren't going for historical accuracy.
Most western historians have failed to properly inform us about the nature and scope of the war in the east
The Problem is that it seems they based the whole movie "Enemy at the Gates" on only several paragraphs of the book with the same title, which is about 5% of the movie and 95% is whatever garbage the Writers and Director could contrive in their own heads.
The book with the same title seems to have been their only source of any information. They did not reference Zaitsev's own book "Notes of a Sniper". Which has more details.
Zaitsev - was a non-commissioned officer in the Pacific Fleet of the USSR Navy. He volunteered to join a Naval Infantry(Marine) Battalion in July 1942 which was attached to the 284th Rifle Division which was being assigned to 62nd Army which defended the city of Stalingrad.
This is why he wore a Navy uniform:
http://tinyurl.com/jfxnzyv
Danilov - was always an officer(Lieutenant) in the 284th Division, he was not his "agent" or whatever one would call the character in the movie. Danilov was mentioned in both books because Danilov was wounded(not killed) by an unknown Axis sniper in a defensive position held by the 284th Division, Zaitsev was sent out to locate and eliminate that Axis sniper.
Kulikov - was a member of Zaitsev's Sniper group(and a soldier in the same division), Zaitsev was the group's leader. He was not killed while Zaitsev led the group. Kulikov actually was with Zaitsev when they both eliminated the Axis sniper that wounded Danilov.
Zaitsev is pictured here on the left:
http://tinyurl.com/zhrtkq2
The book "Enemy at the Gates" probably made a reference to the names above and that is why these names were included in the movie. But they were not based on the real people.
Zaitsev was wounded by a German rocket mortar attack in December 1942 and was taken to a Military Hospital before the Axis Forces(elements of the German 6th, 4th Tank(Panzer), and the 3rd and 4th Romanian Axis Armies) in the city were surrounded by 6 Soviet Field Armies and surrendered(February 1943).
Most western historians have failed to properly inform us about the nature and scope of the war in the east
It is not Historians who are the problem.
Ignorance about History of WW2 is now common in eastern Europe not only in the West. In June 2016 members of the Russian government put a new monument in the city of Saint Petersburg, the monument was for "Russian officer"(until 1917)Field Marshal Karl Gustav Mannerheim, who was the commander of Finland's Military who were allied to Nazi Germany in WW2 and tried to starve the city into surrendering. The city's residents were outraged - but nobody in the Russian Government cares.
..((Godless Communist against Religious Kleptocracy)).. share
>>Letters to Iwo Jima<<
Letters from Iwo Jima is actually about WW2, while Enemy at the Gates is a movie set in an alternate reality with no real connection to WW2 on the Eastern Front.
If Letters from Iwo Jima was directed and produced with the same ignorance for history and disdain as this movie then it would have looked something like this:
1. Akira Kurosawa as Shogun of the Imperial Army, for no other reason then the fact that some people in the USA heard of him, General Kuribayashi - general who?
2. Sancho - the main character - an illiterate Samurai villager from a village on Mount Fuji. Only because people in the USA heard of Samurai, Mount Fuji, and like to think of other nationalities as "villagers" and "peasants".
3. Sancho is part of the 7th Samurai [fill in the blank]. The Writers would be too lazy to explain what the 7th Samurai is supposed to be.
4. There would be only several people with power - Kurosawa(the Shogun) and dozens of "Kempei-tai" - who would be shown as Prison Guards who control a Mob of Prisoners(the Imperial Japanese Army). The Writers would not burden themselves with researching who or what "Kempei-tai" were or what was the rank structure of the IJA. Who has time for that? "Kempei-tai" are bad - because we said so. And they all must be the same rank - because most people don't know how a Lieutenant is different from a Colonel.
5. The 7th Samurai had to capture Mount Suribachi from American Army Rangers calling themselves Inglorious Basterds. They failed. The Americans lose most of their soldiers to typhoid fever and/or cholera - not because the Japanese ferociously defended the island.
..((Godless Communist against Religious Kleptocracy))..
If you think Enemy at the Gates is a good WW2 movie then you have not seen many WW2 movies. Hollywood does not normally make movies were Russians are supposed to be "good guys", when they do we get insulting garbage like this.
There are dozens of Russian WW2 movies made between 1943 and today. But people in the West never see them. A new one which will be released later this year promises to be very good quality.
Panfilov's 28 Men:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-QBqT9RQAM
This is about the men of the 316th Rifle Division(the "Panfilov" division - named after its commander Major General Panfilov who was killed in combat during the division's month of non-stop combat in 1941).
November 1941(a year before the battle of Stalingrad) - the Nazi German 4th Tank(Panzer) Group(40th and 46th Tank[Panzer] Corps - 2nd, 5th, 10th, and 11th Tank Divisions) and 2nd SS Tank Division("Das Reich") were pushing toward Moscow, the capital of the USSR. The Axis attacked the USSR in June 1941.
The 316th Division(later renamed 8th Guards) as part of the Soviet 16th Army defended the area where these Nazi divisions were advancing. They stopped the Nazi's advance and in December 1941 were part of a counter-attack that pushed the Nazi divisions back to where they were in October 1941, the Axis Forces never recovered from this defeat and were forced into defensive positions in the north until they were completely forced to retreat out of the country in 1944.
The title is based on the title of a newspaper article in 1942 which became like a legend of the "300 Spartans", when more than a dozen German tanks were damaged or destroyed in a sector defended by 28 men from the 316th Division.
..((Godless Communist against Religious Kleptocracy))..
Jesus Christ people, this is a movie not a documentary, the idea was to convey an emotional truth, not factual, and it was a success in my opinion! For facts refer to documentaries, there are thousands!
shareMaybe one of the best, but not thee best. Band of Brothers, The Pacific, and U-571 are better. Although I love the soundtrack to this movie, and Jude Law is nice to look at for 2 hours. :)
shareI like Cheddar Cheese on my Burger.
I would say my memory is not what it used to be. But I don't remember what my memory used to be.