Enemy at the Gates: Critic Reviews

100%

MovieWeb: 0 reviews

54%

RottenTomatoes: 50 reviews

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Amy Taubin Village Voice (Top Critic)

Hackneyed material.
Full Review » 11 years ago
Peter Rainer New York Magazine (Top Critic)

It's as if an obsessed movie nut had decided to collect every bad war-movie convention on one computer and program it to spit out a script.
Full Review » 10 years ago
Jonathan Rosenbaum Chicago Reader (Top Critic)

There's never much risk of reality intruding--just a lot of histrionic James Horner music nd plenty of designer stubble on the soldiers' faces.
Full Review » 5 years ago
Peter Travers Rolling Stone (Top Critic)

80

Any flaws in execution pale against those moments when the film brings history to vital life.
Full Review » 11 years ago
John A. Nesbit Old School Reviews

34

more character development and depth would vastly improve this
Full Review » 1 year ago
Nell Minow Common Sense Media

80

Tense and violent WWII movie.
Full Review » 1 year ago
Kevin Carr 7M Pictures

40

it could have held back on the parts featuring boredom because they did tend to drag the suspense down a bit
Full Review » 2 years ago
Ryan Cracknell Movie Views

While it does have some solid moments of action, the film as a whole is laughable.
Full Review » 3 years ago
Hollywood.com

40

Enemy at the Gates won't find too many friends at the box office -- fans of war movies (and of Jude Law) will appreciate it, but there isn't much for everyone else in this mid-March downer.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Bob Grimm Sacramento News & Review

40

There's a decent movie buried in here somewhere, but the lousy love triangle and ultimate lack of focus make this WWII drama a bit hard to take.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Rob Gonsalves eFilmCritic.com

40

Flatulent hero-worship of a man played by a tired-looking actor who deserves funkier roles.
Full Review » 5 years ago
Time Out

Set-pieces get you so far (and Annaud delights in blowing this set to pieces), but the script's shortcomings aren't camouflaged by the decision to adopt Home Counties' accents as the film's lingua franca.
Full Review » 6 years ago
Jeffrey Overstreet Looking Closer

67

Annaud shows a real knack for suspense here, enough to make me hope he will do more action-adventure in the future.
Full Review » 7 years ago
Jordan Hiller Bangitout.com

If only ambition was the bar at which to measure the quality of motion pictures, Enemy at the Gates could sit atop the best of the year.
Full Review » 8 years ago
Eugene Novikov Film Blather

50

There's ambition, and then there's pretense. It's a common mistake for both filmmakers and filmgoers to mistake the latter for the former.
Full Review » 9 years ago
Harry Guerin RTE Interactive (Dublin, Ireland)

60

Worth the trouble, but make sure to leave the history notes at home.
Full Review » 9 years ago
John R. McEwen Film Quips Online

80

It generally succeeds at telling a truly heroic story, providing yet another vehicle to showcase the talents of Law and Harris, and of their supporting cast.
Full Review » 9 years ago
David Poland Hot Button

[It's] clearly meant to measure up to or reach past what Steven Spielberg did in Saving Private Ryan. But it is one of the poorest imitations I have seen so far.
Full Review » 9 years ago
Matthew Turner ViewLondon

60

The central thriller element of the film more than compensates for these deficiencies as well as any of the dodgier script moments.
Full Review » 10 years ago
Margaret A. McGurk Cincinnati Enquirer

63

While Enemy at the Gates aims to do justice to history, it trips and falls on its own romantic pretense.
Full Review » 10 years ago
David Nusair Reel Film Reviews

63

Enemy at the Gates is a good movie that could have been great, if not for the inflated running time.
Full Review » 10 years ago
Jon Niccum Lawrence Journal-World

88

Time and again the movie feels like it's working toward a Hollywood moment but always retreats before succumbing to the opportunity.
Full Review » 10 years ago
Paul Salfen Supercala.com

This movie would be great if the characters would get in character.
Full Review » 10 years ago
Sean Burns Philadelphia Weekly

Yawn. Remember when war movies didn't need love triangles?
Full Review » 10 years ago
James Sanford Kalamazoo Gazette

Although "Enemy" is a huge production, with burning cityscapes, hundreds of extras and uncommonly vivid period detail, Annaud's combination of stark realism and contrived romance doesn't always jell
Full Review » 10 years ago