In an Eastwood-esque scene, the protagonist, played by Jude Law (The Talented Mr. Ripley), and his �Political Officer� comrade, Joseph Finnes (Shakespeare in Love), huddle amid a bomb-riddled building in order to find a hapless German soldier for them to snipe. While Jude Law�s character scopes around the ruins, he spies a German telegraph wire and plots to shoot it so that a grunt German �repairman� would attempt to undo the damage and play as a target to hone Law�s snipping skills. Finnes, too, sees the wire and asks, �How far is it? 180 meters?� Law�s stoic-stone looks harden as his eyes focuses on the black telegraph wire, takes a controlled inhalation, and pulls the trigger splitting the wire in two. Jude Law slowly puts his! ! camouflaged riffle down on the crumbled concrete and answers his comrade�s query, �155.� Finnes face stretches in smiling pride of his companion�s abilities.
I�m still not sure if audiences will equate muscles with meters. Most likely what the director and the producers of this film had in mind, was to be as historically accurate as possible. The then Russian government had already been using metrics for some time; therefore, Finnes� character wouldn�t have asked his question using yards. Whether or not the makers of �Enemy at the Gates� were trying to be historically accurate or trying to throw in a leftover from the spaghetti-westerns isn�t important: it�s the fact that they exposed American audiences to metrics. It�s this type of exposure that will germinate seeds of curiosity, which might lead people to wonder, �Just how far is 155 meters?� Watch any type of science fiction on tel! ! evision, you�ll be bombarded with �kilometers,� �meters,� and �nanometers� adding an entertaining twist to metrication. Who knows? Maybe we�ll see a future Arnold Schwarzenegger movie with him saying in his sonorous voice, �I�ll be back in a nano.�
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Personal Address - Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail.
