The historical context of this film is a trampoline for it in a most ironic fashion. At first, you hear that Vasily Zaytsev was a real sniper and war hero, and the duel really happened, and it seems to prelude a film that will delve into the grittiest realities of the Soviet effort in one of the most hard-fought military victories in the history of war. Enemy at the Gates seems to be this film for a while, with its gut-wrenching opening battle scene, and the flitting back to the behind-the-lines war effort where you fear not the enemy but your superiors. But it then turns for a different angle, tossing in a difficult-to-justify love story and a one-on-one battle that fails because of unconvincing performances by almost every actor involved. And while Cyrillic-printed wartime leaflets argue that Zaytsev is raking in confirmed kills that never happen on-screen, leading to the question of whether they happened at all, you find yourself asking if a better movie would have been made about the 400 men that Vasily Zaytsev may or may not have ever killed to earn the Hero of the Soviet Union award, rather than the one battle, fought in silence, based off of a quick note in Zaytsev's memoirs that no historian could affirm. If the whole movie had reflected the attitude and quality of the first act, it would have been easy for it to overcome the less-than-stellar acting throughout, but as it happened it loses momentum as quickly as a Soviet train whose rails have been blown to pieces by Nazi saboteurs.