Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #48661 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-09-16
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 119 minutes

Amazon.com
In this twisty thriller about Britain's secret code breakers during World War II, Tom Jericho (Dougray Scott, best known as the villain of Mission Impossible 2) devised the means to break the Nazi Enigma code, but a relationship gone awry sent the erratic genius into a breakdown. Now the Nazis have switched their codes, just as huge convoys of ships with crucial supplies are crossing the Atlantic--and squads of U-boats are hunting for them. With the help of his former lover's roommate (the ever-adorable Kate Winslet) and under the watchful eye of a suspicious intelligence officer (Jeremy Northam), Jericho struggles to figure out if there's a spy among the code breakers as they fight to crack the new Nazi ciphers. The plot gets extremely tricky but the excellent cast keeps you engaged. Written by the extremely tricky playwright-screenwriter Tom Stoppard (who cowrote Shakespeare in Love and Brazil). --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews

A Graham Greene-ian Entertainment
"Enigma" is an absorbing World War II drama of suspense as long as one takes it as what Graham Greene called "an entertainment" and does not press it too hard for historical accuracy. Because it has several subplots, which become clear only after repeated viewings, the movie leaves the viewer grasping at a few loose ends that are never tied up completely. With an intelligent script by playwright Tom Stoppard, "Enigma" works best when it focuses upon the Bletchley Park team of classicists, mathematicians, and other academics working on cracking the intercepts of German submarine traffic in the North Atlantic. It works less well when it veers off into car, train, and motorboat chases. Nevertheless, clever plot twists, atmospheric English locations, and a talented cast, which includes Kate Winslet, Jeremy Northam, Tom Hollander, Matthew MacFadyen, and Corin Redgrave, ensure that the viewer will be thoroughly entertained.

a film I can rewatch again and again
This is a superb, beautiful film, cleverly making the dull work of codebreaking at Bletchley into a great thriller. Whatever inaccuracies experts so love pointing out, this as a film is wonderful and one I can rewatch a million times over.

I only wish they could make more films on this theme with this cast!

Thriller with a plotful of holes
Enigma's role in British espionage is no secret to anyone interested in the Second World War - nor is how Churchill let the Luftwaffe bomb Coventry to conceal that the Brits had a machine and had cracked the codes. This movie alters some history, but not with outright crudity. Also, turning the events at Bletchely Park into a movie is not itself objectionable. After all, this is a thriller, and while historical facts shouldn't be mangled beyond recognition, success depends mostly on whether the results are, well, thrilling.

That stands as the main challenge, since the excitement at Bletchley Park had been so sedentary: a group of brainy Brits were gathered to puzzle over intercepted Nazi signals, and, with the aid of a machine, they helped to end the war a lot sooner. This film infuses drama into its story by illustrating, for instance, how the Bletchley crew were able to penetrate the Enigma codes through the German U-boat attacks on Atlantic merchant marine convoys. The Soviet massacre of thousands of Polish officers at Katyn, after the partition of Poland, is history that's also drawn into the plot, and very astutely. Some fictional garb also helps dress things up with a dramatic plot: a passionate affair with a spy; another with a plain-but-true signals gal; some illicit goings-on to undertake some extra-curricular decoding; a race to prevent a rendezvous with a submarine; etc.

The production itself is promising: Tom Stoppard based his fine script on a novel by Robert Harris (Fatherland; Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome; etc.); the John Barry score is suspenseful; Michael Apted directs; and there are first-rate sets, costumes and art direction. As for casting: Jeremy Northam, looking very true to the period, is exquisitely menacing as a quite detestable spy; Kate Winslet mines her slight part for every nugget. Dougray Scott plays Jericho, a slump-shouldered genius who cracked Enigma once and must help do it again - yet, improbably, he's a fine driver who holds his own in a punch-up with a brawny spy in a rowboat. The role of a duplicitous seductress is played by Saffron Burrows, whose onscreen work Apted keeps in soft focus, fixing mostly on her looks.

For all that, several scripted weaknesses turn `Enigma' into a disappointment. While concealing ownership of a top-secret Enigma device was vital to the war effort, we're led to believe it was displayed at Bletchley in a glass case whose tiny key would unlock a girl's diary. This vitally important hardware is then "borrowed" by our pallid hero, who races to an old barn with Winslet to decode stolen intercepts. (Oddly, the letters light up as its keys are pressed: in an office, perhaps ...but in an abandoned barn?)

All this outdoorsy scampering, including a car chase, aims to move the plot along. Fair enough, although anyone above age 12 will find its twists and turns implausible. Previous to this, for instance, the un-deciphered scripts had to be stolen from two intelligence offices where security seems like a pesky afterthought. Then, at the barn, a spy and two policemen assigned to watch the Bletchley geniuses land on our conniving couple, yet they're oddly unable to find this larger-than-a-breadbox item - which, we learn later, was apparently hidden between the back seat and the trunk. Nor do we ever learn how Jericho returned the missing machine; in both cases, camera fadeouts supposedly induce viewers to turn to their chocolates, stop thinking, and ...Hey Presto!, all's well and let's get on with it.

A second attempt by Jericho to snag the turned cryptanalyst involves driving his roadster to a far-off Scottish island: up the length of Britain during tattle-on-anyone wartime, when fuel was strictly rationed (which is underscored in another scene). Just how he manages, despite closely-watched confinement to the Park, is, again, not explained. But the director skips by this, and the fade-out/fade-in "technique" blinks us to Jericho alighting on the scene, matching a revealing postcard with a Scots cottage, and, by crikey, it's in the nick of time: a submarine is about to steal away the villain. That's when our featherweight lead dashes to the pier and tangles in a rowboat punch-up with the strapping Polish turncoat - and viewers must decide, again, if they're suspending disbelief or are being treated as credulous.

Preventing at all costs that US Poles learn about the Soviets' massacre is the sharp twist in Harris's plot, since that might stop the US from entering the war. While an amoral Churchill (cf. Coventry, above) presumably conceals the Soviet massacre to save Britain, the Polish cryptologist is led to side with the Nazis, his enemy's enemy.

Such moral minefields in Harris's novel remain in Apted's plot, but his `Enigma' doesn't lay it all out anywhere as sharply: despite having plenty of atmosphere, it lacks a sure grip as a movie. At the end of the day, every suspenseful thriller needs slick telling, and that's what this film lacks. The chases get scant directorial attention: the first one, with Jericho being pursued, ends with (unfunny) Keystone-cops exclamation marks; the second involves chasing the villain on a train, yet it only culminates in a muddled and unsatisfying end. And ditto for at least two thieving scenes, which in more attentive hands (Hitchcock's? David R Ellis's?) would provide audiences with much delightful anguish. If more weakness in the plot were needed, one could ask just why the Germans would transmit their grisly discovery at Katyn through Engima? Even Apted's single attempt at comic relief, through an officer who cheers on the decoders with pompous Shakespearean declamations, seems only half-hearted; as with the ravenous kiss scene, another chance to enhance the film is lost.

Kate Winslet plays her role as a frump with toothy art, earning her paycheque along with Northam. Even in her kissing she oozes with the craving of a genuine Cinderella, or of one very well-acted. In this scene, however, the hero's romantic epiphany (along with our interest in these characters) could have been enriched if Apted had got his cameraman to linger on Scott's reaction once her mouth completes its X-rated slurpfest.

Despite this tale's intriguing historical backdrop and many fictional twists, those wanting a thriller are likely to be unsatisfied.