Enigma DVD > Reviews > PUTTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Liked it
Story	Good
Characters / Performances	Good
Special Effects	Good
How does it compare to similar films?	Good

Advantages:	very real feel to it, in the good old traditions of British Spy thrillers .
Disadvantages:	Saffron Burrows  -  weak as the 'love interest'

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

At last the truth – the REAL Story behind the Enigma machine!

This film is based on the best-selling novel by Thomas Harris and is pretty much an all-English affair. No Hollywood ‘tarting up’ of the story here.

So what of the story? It centres around the undercover world of codes, espionage, the occasional British stiff upper lip and lots of clandestine activity. Unlike the American version of how the US Navy managed to break the codes and steal the ‘Enigma machine’ in ‘U571’, here ‘Enigma’ tells of an England that actually did exist. Not that anyone knew at the time, because the whole proceedings were shrouded in secrecy – for obvious reasons!

The film follows the fortunes of Tom Jericho (Dougray Scott) - a codebreaker at Britain’s secrets HQ at Bletchley Park during World War II. He is faced with the untimely disappearance of a former girlfriend and an urgent need to crack a Navy code, before three transatlantic convoys run into a whole host of Nazi U-boats. Add to these problems the fact that rather misleading messages are coming in from Russia. Well things do go in threes, but are these trio of events connected in any way?

You guessed it – of course they are!

The movie looks very realistic. Despite not being able to use the actual buildings and grounds of Bletchley Park itself (near Milton Keynes and open to the public these days), it has been recreated and looks the ‘real deal’. In fact the whole film and storyline feels ‘right’. Scott is excellent in the role as the codebreaker, but sadly his co-star and love interest, ‘Clare Romilly’, played by Saffron Burrows is a little out of her depth. She does not quite ring true and some of the weakest moments of the film are those between a trying-his-best Scott and a sadly-not-up-to-it Burrows. Yes she’s pretty and all that but….

Award winning actress Kate Winslet adds weight to the saga with her role as ever reliable ‘Hetty’. She helps out Jericho and does a good job, but often the scene stealer is the supremely smarmy intelligence officer Wigram (played to a ‘t’ by Jeremy Northam).

It is a film in the good old British tradition of such old time spy classics as the ‘Third Man’ and ‘The 39 Steps’. Not quite in the same class, but it was good to see a film without too much glitz, glamour and over-the-top effects. One that relied on good direction (by Michael Apted) and a well rounded plot for it’s tense moments.

In a Summer with very few high spots as far as the British Film industry is concerned, ‘Enigma’ goes a long way into restoring your faith in that industry. Plus it’s nice to see that the film ‘puts the record straight’ (with a dash of artistic licence) as to what really happened all those years ago.

U571 – Eat your heart out!…it was the Brits wot broke the codes!