Enigma Reviews

Decent retelling of the real life story of the cracking of the Enigma code

The story of the breaking of Nazi codes during World War 2 is surely an interesting topic. Sadly, this movie does not entirely live up to that promise. The look isn't exactly cinema standard, it often feels like a British TV movie with its soft-focus flashbacks. Those, while telling an aspect of the story that's important later on, cost the film some pace in the beginning. The overall good cast and the decent last 30 minutes still make for an entertaining movie, but somehow there was more potential in this. It left me a little too indifferent and will probably be forgotten pretty soon.

Thriller about Britain's secret code breakers during World War II. Kate is great in this movie.

Proficient but dull thriller let down by an unengaging lead.

All this viewer can say is that was one heck of a ride! This one has all the ingredients. A group of brilliant code breakers facing a deadline to crack Germany's new and improved Enigma code, a counter-spy that may be leaking information to the enemy, a beautiful woman missing, who may have been murdered, and only two people who have the brains and the bravery to follow the leads through to their logical conclusion. Dougray Scott is brilliant as Tom Jericho, the haggard Oxford mathematician who cracked the original Enigma code and has the best chance of finding the solution to the current version, but he is less than trusted because of a previous breakdown. Kate Winslet is Hester Wallace, a "glorified file clerk" who possesses a superior intellect and a dogged determination to decipher the few clues she and Tom have managed to piece together. The common thread that brings these two together is the disappearance of Claire (Saffron Burroughs), Hester's roommate and Tom's former girlfriend. The brilliant screenplay by Tom Stoppard is brought to life and fairly crackles with tension from one scene to the next by the masterful direction by Michael Apted. The scenery is authentic, the petty office politics that nearly derailed the critical mission is enjoyably frustrating, the supporting cast is brilliant, and the narrative field becomes littered with enough red herrings and plot twists to keep even the sharpest sleuths in the audience guessing right up to the end. Then to top it all off we have the inevitable love story that develops when two closely matched intellects are thrust together in a bit of subterfuge and the perfect recipe is ready. What a joyride!

An entertaining and engaging thriller which managed to keep me on the edge of my seat throughout. It's nice to watch a film that manages to keep a heightened sense of tension without the use of guns and explosions. Instead the tension came from the motives of the characters themselves ("Was Claire a spy? How did the Germans know to change their codes?")

Enigma is loosely based historical fiction: the events the film is based around are real, but the characters and events are completely fictional. The backdrop of the war and Bletchley Park provided effective back drops, but if you know anything of the actual history of the Enigma, this film may irritate you. For myself, I was able to put that aside and appreciate this intelligent thriller for what it is; even if the final confrontation was a bit out of place.

U-571 may have been historically inaccurate, but at least it was entertaining. This is as exciting as tea.

Interesting!

Good film showing how WE actually broke the code and not the Yanks.

Top-notch mystery/suspense/thriller set in World War II around the Enigma codebreakers. That a movie about breaking codes could be an edge of your seater is a testament to the filmmakers involved on this one. A smart script centered around the real-life events of U-boats descending on a huge relief convoy in the Atlantic, as well as other events I won't reveal here make this one a great film not just for film lovers but for those interested in World War II as well. A great cast all around, including a breathtaking Saffron Burrows, haunted Dougray Scott, the always wonderful Kate Winslet, and my particular favorite, Jeremy Northam as the smug intelligence agent on the hunt for a possible breach of security. Great, entertaining film!

Very interesting and enjoyable. Good story and interesting concept. Loved Kate Winslet's charater. I love it when she playes charaters that aren't flashy, because then you feel like you could be her. Matthew Macfadyen was good as Cove, the scarred intellegence officer.

loved this film, but for the melancholy very end (to me), but mad about anything to do w enigma/Bletchley so v grateful (& for the book). Its fantasy, and lovely, so forget the Turing disservice! Thank u fr the film! xx

Good movie about WWII. "Enigma" is about secret messages, U boats, cospirations, traitors and it pretty much summarize a part of what it meant to be in war for England. I did like the fact that the story focuses of this often forgotten part of history, but I have to say that characters didn't look real to me. Acting was ok, but the whole plot was kind of 'unrealistic' and I honestly think it was just maximized for the big screen.

An overall good, enjoyable project. Just don't expect a particularly accurate historic movie. This one isn't either particularly well written and the story feels at moments kind of flat. But it's still ok and watchable. It has its highs an lows, though.

Interesting and bright film. Through all film you have not clue who is the villain.
keeps you on your toes.true story and good film.Highly recommended.

The mystery doesn't revolve solely around guessing who the bad guy is -- there's a historical and personal context to the whole thing -- and the thrills are more cerebral than visceral.

A griping and involving story featuring a great script based upon a brilliant novel.

i loved the story even though it didn't give any credit to the TRUE genius who actually broke the Modern code...Alan Turing, And his Polish predecessors in the 1920's who Originally broke the code way back then....oh well...Hollywood Gobbles facts and regurgitates them as truths.

This move is very clever: with some historical facts.

Those going into this film expecting a tension-filled WWII thriller about codebreakers will be sorely disappointed; the movie focuses more on romance than adrenaline.

I'm not an expert in the history of codebreaking, computers, and the Enigma machine. I can tell you that the role of the Poles in real events is sadly underplayed, not just here but in essentially all movies about Enigma. The Poles acquired the first Enigma machine--the original three-reel one, mind, but still. The Poles contributed quite a bit toward breaking the code, too. It's not as egregious as a certain American movie implying that the work was all done by Americans, but still.

Thomas Jericho (Dougray Scott) has worked himself into illness in breaking Enigma code. (Even with the machine, there was still quite a lot of work involved in getting the day's codes--and the Engima settings were changed every day.) He was sent off to Cambridge to recover; now that he has, he's back. Claire (Saffron Burrows), the girl of his affections, disappears, and Jericho adds the search for Claire into his obsessive work. To both ends, he enlists the help of Hester Wallace (Kate Winslet), and he works very hard at driving her past the point of madness as well--or at least getting her arrested for treason.

Very few movies bother making mathematics and such interesting. However, this one shows a group of nerds being fascinating, and they are deeply devoted to winning the war for Britain. They follow the great convoy battle with fear and fascination. They want to get enough transmissions to break the day's code, but at the same time, they're afraid that, if they do, lives will be lost. It's a horrible bind to be in, but there they are. It's their job to break the code, and maybe breaking the code will save more lives than will be lost in the convoy battle. It's the same bind people were in all over the war.

The spy story, frankly, feels silly. It feels stuck on because the mathematicians really aren't that interesting. I think they are, of course, but my opinion doesn't seem to matter. To the average person, I suppose, the drama of codebreaking, even with a love story tacked on--and there are many other ways to tack on a love story--is rather dull. This regardless of the fact that the fate of Europe hung in the balance. It's as I was saying the other day--the reason Apollo 13 got made into a movie and Apollo 11 didn't is that most of the story of Apollo 11 is technical, and the technical stuff is boring. It's the human drama that matters. However, the spy story is just complicated and unbelievable.

I understand that it's based on a novel, and the odds are almost certain that the novel is better. However, we do get a Tom Stoppard screenplay, here, and there ain't no stoppin' that Tom Stoppard.