Awesome / Enemy at the Gates

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• The suicidal charge between the Russians and Germans, which only comes about fifteen minutes into the film, is proof that the Berserk Button is best pushed during even the earliest Action Prologue.
  • The thunderous accompanying orchestral soundtrack, one of the late, great composer James Horner's most criminally underrated works.
• Vasily and Danilov are lying in between dead soldiers in a fountain when they spot a group of Nazi officers in a nearby building. Danilov wants to shoot them, but he doesn't know how to operate the bolt-action rifle; Vasily takes it, loads five cartridges, and proceeds to score five headshots in twenty seconds or so, timing the shots to coincide with the explosions so the enemy can't hear them. Danilov himself considers the feat awesome enough that he makes a hero out of Vasily.
  • In an Insider video reviewing sniping scenes from movies, former Special Ops Sniper Nicholas Irving remarks that not only do the details of this scene feel accurate, but also that Vasily takes out the five soldiers in the same order that he would have, faced with that situation.
• Konig, earlier in the film, shooting one of the soldiers as he jumps between buildings midair within a second of seeing him. Vasily even takes this as proof that Konig is a formidable threat.
• Danilov gets one just after the first entry, when he speaks up to Khrushchev about the need to inspire their soldiers instead of just terrorizing them. Considering that Khrushchev's predecessor has just blown his brains out in the other room, and the fact that the Red Army wasn't exactly known for letting its officers speak their minds, and that Khrushchev is taking charge on the authority of Stalin himself, it took no little courage to speak out like that.
• When Vasily is trapped by Konig in an abandoned warehouse, hiding behind an old iron stove and unable to move without getting himself shot, we get one for each character. First, Vasily had dropped his rifle out of reach, and was throwing his pocket knife attached to a string to retrieve it. He caught it, and started pulling it toward him...only for Konig to shoot the string in half. Then Tania, who followed Vasily, temporarily blinds Konig with the reflection of the sun off a piece of broken glass, and Vasily gets off a shot that hits Konig's trigger hand.
• Despite the cynical exploitation for propaganda purposes, the "letters from Russian mothers to their sons on the front" read out by the commissars in the opening river crossing scene are quite stirring:
  Russian mother (as read by commissar): Everyone here knows that you will not fall back! Everyone here is proud of you! Your father is dead! Your brothers are dead! Avenge us on the hordes of fascists!

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