Enigma (2001)

Enigma is based on the fictional Robert Harris novel which is a part wartime thriller and part love story based on code breakers in Bletchley Park. It mixes fiction with some real characters and events. The book is gives a grim depictions of a war torn Britain which I am afraid endured for several decades after the war.Dougray Scott is a mathematician recovering from a breakdown after a doomed love affair. He returns to Bletchley to find out his ex lover, Claire has gone missing and there is pressure to crack the Enigma code and with intelligence officers crawling about, there might also be a mole in his team.Scott (with a variable accent) teams up with a dowdy Kate Winslet to investigate what happened to Claire and discover something more sinister.The film was adapted by Oscar winner Tom Stoppard. He introduces some new scenes and different climax from the book. He does well in keeping the grimness of domestic life and fashions of the time but its not a successful screenplay. Director Michael Apted struggles to give flair and spark to the film as it remains dour, dull and lifeless. Despite a few extravagant scenes it does look like a glorified television film.Scott and Winslet work well together but the film is too uneven, there are some good shots of the code breaking machines whirring around and some humorous scenes of the women working in Bletchley with the lecherous supervisor. The thriller element despite a good start fails to work and in this adaptation seems flawed.Jeremy Northam's acting is provided by his hat and his supercilious character has a habit of speaking lines that sound out of period.A disappointment especially as I enjoyed reading the novel.

Ask a sailor on the Atlantic Convoys whether he would rather be sitting in a warm,dry and safe office crunching numbers and doing crosswords back in England and I imagine the answer,if printable at all,would be resoundingly positive.My sympathy for the poor beleaguered mathmoes and misfits,weirdoes and space cadets who made up the battalions of Codebreakers is strictly limited.I'm not saying they didn't do an essential job,I'm just saying they should have got on with it without any prima donna - type whingeing and flouncing in and out of doors in a huff.There are people dying out there - get a grip. Our hero codebreaker Tom Jericho(Mr Dougray Scott) is a typical unworldly Cambridge Man who can't take rejection and is slaughtered when posh totty Claire( Miss Saffron Burrows)dumps him.Recalled from the Funny Farm when the German Navy changes it's Code,he has red eyes,stubble and downturned lips,just so you know he is really upset.To add to his woes,Claire has gone missing and the Secret Service(Mr Jeremy Northam,smooth as a young Nigel Patrick)suspects she may be a spy,therefore he is tainted with guilt by association. The Germans uncover the Katyn Forest atrocity - perpetrated by our gallant allies the Russians during their occupation of Poland - and the Codebreakers pass the information on but the Government keeps it under wraps for fear of upsetting good old Uncle Joe Stalin.(In reality,the Russians had done everything they could do frame the Germans for the massacre,including using German firearms.It wasn't until 45 years after the war ended that the "enlightened" President Gorbachev admitted his country's guilt,by which time their grip on Eastern Europe had loosened). With Miss Kate Winslet - done up like a plump Lettice Leaf - as Claire's erstwhile chum,Mr Scott sets off to find her and crack the new German Code in one single bound. There is amusing Old Sea Dog nonsense from Mr Corin Redgrave who has some of the best Tom Stoppard dialogue. But generally,"Enigma" is a pretty routine 1950s British World War Two movie brought up to date with a smidgen of sex and a smattering of bad language.The "romance" between Mr Scott and Miss Winslet must have developed while I blinked an eye and his change from wimpish drama queen to testosterone - fuelled hero at the end is just a tad unconvincing. Fifty years earlier,Mr Dirk Bogarde and Miss Virginia Mckenna would have made a much better job of it.

This movie is huge falsification of history. First of all - Polish mathematicians and cryptologists decrypted Enigma several years before WWII. Decrypting machines were already built. You may read about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_the_Enigma But Polish contribution to the story in this movie is mentioned in this movie in one single phrase. But there is even worse point. The only bad character of the movie is a Pole! Author of this stupid scenario invented Polish guy who would be able to betray allies and become a German spy. What an absurd ! This 'author' probably knows nothing about polish attitude to Nazis during WWII. Poland during WWII had two occupants and two enemies - Nazi Germany and Soviet Union. But no one would join one enemy against the other. It was impossible. But not for makers of this movie. If Pukowski were a real man, after revealing the truth about Katyn, he would probably commit suicide.

Bad plot: a Pole working in Bletchley learns from one of intercepted German reports about Katyn massacre on Polish officers by Soviet NKVD. He is so upset that he betrays the fact that Allies decode Enigma, nearly bringing disaster on his host country UK... This is a movie worthy of Soviet, or worse, German propaganda, showing heroes as villains.Good plot and movie material: I am sending everyone interested to Wikipedia information about professors Rejewski, Zygalski, and Rozycki, men who broke Enigma and created first computing bombs. This is a better material for a very exciting war movie, although not a happy Hollywood end is available here: Poles are betrayed by Churchill and Rosevelt in Yalta despite their contribution to the Allied war effort, they are depicted as unwanted troublemakers in the pro Soviet British press ... to appease the "lesser evil" Uncle Joe. Especially oblivion of the three heroes who broke Enigma and created systems to read German communication on a production scale is deplorable.