De film vertelt het waargebeurde verhaal van Vassili Zaitzev, een Russische sluipschutter die tijdens de Slag om Stalingrad in de Tweede Wereldoorlog in z’n eentje honderd Duitsers vermoordde. Hij wordt door z’n officier gebruikt als propaganda. Ze worden beiden verliefd op dezelfde vrouw.
 
Bron: moviemeter.nl

In modern history theres never been a battle so dominated by snipers, as was Stalingrad, the 1942 high-water mark of German conquest in Russia. By October 1942, the Germans had seized nine-tenths of the city, which artillery had so reduced to rubble that the Reichs weary soldiers called the fighting “Rattenkrieg,” or the “War of the Rats.” Combatants on both sides tunneled, scurried, and hid in the ruins of once enormous industrial plants and whole blocks of collapsed apartment buildings. It was a snipers haven.
 
The premier Soviet sniper at Stalingrad was Vassili Zaitsev, who had been a shepherd in the Ural Mountains. In his first 10 days of shooting, Zaitsev killed 40 Germans. When his tally neared 100, he became the focus of a Soviet propaganda campaign as the living epitome of Russian resistance.It was inevitable that Berlin would strike back. Dispatched to Stalingrad was the commandant of the Sniper School at Zossen, Major Koning/Konig to kill Vasili. Vasili was alerted. Focusing his search along a narrow front in his area of operation, the Red October factory district, he and his spotter, Nikolai Kulikov, finally observed the top of a German helmet creeping along a trench. Vasili realized it was a trick, because the helmet some how moved unevenly.
 
Bron: snipersparadise.com