Enigma

Rating:
Summary: Hey! My mind is beautiful, too!
Review: There's a great story in the muck here somewhere about cloistered English WW II codebreakers and their intellectual battle to crack the Nazi's Enigma machine.

Of course, instead of just telling us that compelling saga, the filmmakers goop it up & find it necessary to launch lead character Dougray Scott on a movie-long, John Nash-like emotional and mental tailspin. Like Nash, of course, Scott's Tom Jericho gets it together and (as opposed to getting a Nobel Prize) basically wins the war for the home team. Yea!

Unfortunately, Michael Apted can't hold a candle to Ron Howard when it comes to narrative and simple storytelling. I was so often flummoxed by what the heck was supposed to be happening. Much of that had to do with the dialogue, which seemed at times to be muffled and rushed.

The redeeming factor here is Kate Winstead. She's underutilized here (check out 'Iris' - among many others - to get a fuller appreciation of her talent), but the movie gets clarified and improves dramatically every time she appears in a scene. Thank goodness for that.

Rating:
Summary: thrilling!!!
Review: In England during World War II, Claire (Saffron Burrows) has mysteriously gone missing and her suitor (Dougray Scott) and roommate (Kate Winslet) go looking for her. They also both work as code-breakers, and it starts to become obvious that Claire's disappearance is somehow connected to U-boats and a mass grave.

As always, Winslet gives the standout performance as the smart overlooked woman, as she is made to be not nearly as attractive as her roommate. She is shown to be frustrated by the patronizing men around her, and also a bit jealous of the frivolous and sought-after Claire. She rules!

Rating:
Summary: WWII Thriller with an aura of intellectualism.
Review: WWII rages and the only thing saving England from defeat is the goods being sent across the Atlantic from America. The only way to make sure that the supplies on the convoys arrive is to know where the infamous U-boat fleet is. The only way to know where the U-boat fleet is depends on reading their enciphered radio messages using the code-breakers hidden away at Belittle Park.

When the German's suddenly change their code the English are in the dark as to what they can do to restore the flow of information. Coincident to this occurrence is the disappearance of Claire a file clerk handling the secret traffic and the return to duty of Claire's ex-boyfriend Tom.

Tom was away for a month because he lost his mind after he was dumped and the brass worry about his ability to do the job anymore. The intelligence service men worry about his ability to remain loyal to his country and wonder if his might be involved with the disappearance of the clerk.

Into all this throw Hester. Smart, sensible, and (with her glasses off) not half bad looking. As Claire's roommate she knows more than she is telling and teams up with Tom to unravel the mystery. Lucky for us the intelligence service is no match for this pair of crossword puzzle solving sleuths. !

I liked this movie and rated it about average. There was only a little coverage given to the secret enigma machine and for the most part that code-breaking process had already occurred before the movie. Despite taking place in the heart of the code center it is really an action thriller more than an intellectual drama.

The DVD did not have a good selection of special features.

Rating:
Summary: COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER
Review: With all the 5-star reviews you'd think that this film ranks right up there with the best thrillers out there, WWII and otherwise. The rush to break the Enigma Code is one of the most fascinating sub-plots of the entire war and you would think that this film would jump at the chance to illustrate this fact by showing us the constant harrassing the allied merchant fleet suffered under the U-Boats and the urgent need to "crack" the code. Very little is devoted to this, instead what we get is a clumsy love story with the Enigma plot as a background. However, the sceanery is beautiful and the acting is good. I also enjoyed the explanation of exactly how Enigma worked - those points alone warrant at least 2 1/2 stars.

Rating:
Summary: Maybe the movie is as good as the reviews claim...
Review: However, I haven't been able to watch it yet. I bought both a new copy of the "Enigma" DVD and a used copy of the DVD. Neither DVD will load in my Toshiba SD-1700 DVD player. Please pay attention to the fine print that says, "Some Region 1 DVDs may contain Regional Coding Enhancement (RCE). Some, but not all, of our international customers have had problems playing these enhanced discs on what are called "region-free" DVD players." My experience suggests that the problem is more pervasive than that. My DVD player is a Region 1 player, and both copies of the DVD are Region 1.

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable but bogged down...
Review: I was fascinated to learn about "Enigma" and the role that the codebreakers played during WWII. My only qualm with the movie is that it didn't focus more on the actual codebreaking and less on the thriller aspect. Overall, I thought the movie was well-acted and the scenery seemed very authentic.

Rating:
Summary: Fix is in
Review: Columbia TriStar has released a new version of this DVD that addresses the incompatibility with Philips and Toshiba DVD players. Contact your DVD vendor for details.

Rating:
Summary: A BRILLIANT, ENTERTAINING, LITERATE FILM
Review: This is one of the best films of all time. A Stoppard-ian cast of characters, intriguing plot and characters that draw you in. It is all comprehensible but if you look away from the screen for 30 nseconds, you may lose track of the story. Even more interesting to watch a second time to see how the screenplay works. More than any other film, this one comes closest to music - parts of it are rhapsodic/sumphonic as you see the various parts come together and intertwine. Obviously conceived and realized by master craftsmen and women.

Rating:
Summary: I have very mixed reactions to this one
Review: There were some things I liked about this film and several things that I didn't like at all. Primarily, I was profoundly disappointed with the script. The problem is this: the story of Enigma and the breaking of the code is such a fascinating story in itself that having it serve as the background of a mystery/espionage story just needlessly complicates things. It reminds me too much of those strange detective novels that couples famous real life individuals with fictional ones, like THE SEVEN PERCENT SOLUTION teaming Sherlock Holmes and Sigmund Freud. To top things off, I found the plot to be either far too complicated (and this from someone who had no trouble following the plot of THE BIG SLEEP) or muddled in the telling. So it wasn't merely a needless plot but also a badly told one.

The greatest outrage was, of course, basing a character on Alan Turing. The problem is that they used a pick-and-choose method. The retained the overall physical resemblance to Turing and his emotional instability. But they jettisoned his famous quirkiness and notoriously difficult personality for a much milder demeanor. Of course, the most offensive change is making Tom Jericho heterosexual, while Turing was very definitely homosexual. This is not a minor quibble, because Turing's homosexuality was, apart from his genius, the central fact of his life. He was persecuted by the police because of it, and during WW II was under heavy security surveillance because his sexual orientation supposedly made him a security risk. Because Jericho-Turing is the central character in the film, this schizophrenic rendering will create enormous discomfort for anyone with much familiarity with either Turing or the Enigma project.

On the positive side, the cast was exceptionally strong, even in instances where they played unpleasant characters. Jeremy Northam plays a well conceived if unpleasant character, but the problem with that is that he is . . . well, unpleasant. Dougray Scott was good as Jericho/Turing, though I got tired of his bags-under-the-eyes appearance. Kate Winslet was fetching with her pretty-girl-with-glasses character.

The best thing about the film, for my taste, was the great period look and feel. Throughout, the film looked and felt like wartime England. And for anyone interested in Enigma, it was just a great rush to see a replica of a Turing machine in action (or at least the little wheels turned back and forth). Seeing an actual Enigma machine (which I read is owned by Mick Jagger, who lent it to the filmmakers for use in the film) was a real charge.

To be honest, four stars is a bit flattering to the film. Probably a solid three, but I give it an extra for letting me see someone manipulate an Enigma.

Rating:
Summary: Horrible Video
Review: As noted in other reviews, the video quality of this dvd is horrible. Not to mention, the movie is a bit slow.