Enigma DVD > Reviews > An Enjoyable Adaptation of a Very Enjoyable Book.

Author's product rating:   

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

Advantages:	A well made World War Two thriller
Disadvantages:	It's still not the REAL real story .  .  .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

When I heard that a film was being made of the top-secret code-breaking operations of the Second World War, my immediate reaction was that it was going to be another Hollywood “America saves the world” type film. Needless to say, it was a pleasant surprise to find that it features an almost all-British cast and is set largely in and around Bletchly Park.
Based on Robert Harris' book of the same name, Enigma stars Dougray Scott as Tom Jericho, a brilliant codebreaker called back to Bletchly Park to help break back into a particularly perplexing form of the German Naval Enigma, codenamed ‘Shark’. Despite having taken 10 months to break into previously, the codebreakers have less than 4 days to start reading the messages to save a vital convoy from meeting with a nasty fate at the hands of a U-boat pack.
The team given the task of breaking 'shark' consists of a number of eccentric, to say the least, mathematicians, chess champions and crossword competition winners including an exiled Polish cryptologist, “Puck” Pukowski, with no love for the Germans (or Russians for that matter).
After arriving at Bletchly, Jericho soon realises that things are not going well: an old girlfriend has disappeared in mysterious circumstances, the park is being investigated by a furtive intelligence officer (Jeremy Northam) and there appears to be a spy in their midst…
The film is very well done, with an atmosphere suitable for wartime Britain, and the sequences set in the North Atlantic (complete with prowling U-boats) are very eerie and enhance the sense of urgency and foreboding.
The flashback type approach is disconcerting at first, but adds considerably to the plot as the story darts from the present (i.e. 1943) to earlier events (giving the background to the events of the present) and back again. It sounds complicated, but it works. There are also regular jumps to Nazi-occupied Europe, where German troops are seen investigating a mass grave; that of 4,500 Polish officers murdered by the Russians at Katyn. Though those unfamiliar with the history might be fairly bewildered by this early in the film, it becomes clearer later on that these events are very significant and the film does a fairly good job of explaining them.
Overall, the film is an enjoyable wartime thriller, although (despite some claims) it is not actually a true story and does take some liberties with history. I’ll refrain from disclosing those, as they are major plot spoilers, but suffice to say none of the characters are or were real.
I'd like to point out as well that the film can tend to be a little Anglo-centric, in that it virtually ignores the role played by Polish cryprologists (the book at least made a reference to the great Marion Rejewski)- sorry to bring that up, but being of Polish descent and with an interest in accurate history it kind of annoys me to see the omission (especially after the controversy over U-571).

It’s also a shame that it wasn’t actually filmed at Bletchly Park…