Enigma (2001)

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Period WW2 geekfest movie shot with admirable British restraint. Well cast and fairly well scripted, if a little complex, but very well acted fictional thriller based on the Nazi code messaging system for its frighteningly deadly unter seaboot corps in its North Atlantic theatre destroying Allied supply ship convoys, principally en route to bulk up the soviet Union's resistance against the might of the of the German Panzer Corps, Wermacht front line infantry, Waffen SS and winter trained mountain corps. If you want to see them all in action then don't watch this film but other action based war movies with them in.This isn't an action war movie, the closest it gets to it is a wound up maths geek biffing his boss on the chin. This is like a pure strategy console game, a long puzzle giving us piece upon piece to solve. It's not fabulously handled by the writer-director partnership in this regard, but the drama certainly is. This is a complex strategic mystery thriller made by straight drama experts rather than complex spy thriller experts but nonetheless I love it, because they get the feel of it spot on and get exceptional performances out of Winslet in particular as a believable female nerd, and Northam as the flamboyant posh police inspector in charge of the high level case.Has a great old fashioned atmosphere helped along with a superbly chosen score of contemporary swing music and Mendlesson, very classy! Highly recommended for a rare geek's look at the non combat roles played in the real war against the dense grain of the overwhelmingly action movie infested WW2 canon.

EnigmaThe key to an unbreakable coded message is to kill the only guy who knows what the code is.However, the code-breaker in this drama doesn't need the code's creator to crack it.Back at Bletchley Park to help British military recover their ability to decipher German U-Boat's intercepts, cryptanalyst Tom (Dougray Scott) is distracted by the disappearance of his girlfriend.To help locate her, Tom teams with her roommate (Kate Winslet) and together they uncover their country's concealment of wartime atrocities to sway US forces to their side.But their snooping soon attracts the attention of an MI-5 operative (Jeremy Northam).Loosely based on the true story of the Bletchley Park code-breakers, Enigma omits much of the facts and characters, including Alan Turing, in order to give this account a more cat-and-mouse vibe, which it has in spades.Incidentally, most intercepted U-Boat messages were just fan letters to Hitler.Yellow Lightvidiotreviews.blogspot.ca

March, 1943. The Shark code is the way Nazi submarines communicate with each other. British cryptoanalysts have broken it. Unfortunately... it was just changed. Mere days are left before a massive, and sorely needed, shipment of resources for allied forces, go into dangerous waters. It's up to a team of eccentric geniuses to crack the new configuration. Among them is Tom(Scott, determined, brilliant), whose ex Claire(Burrows, seductive while dignified) has recently disappeared. He and her friend Hester(Winslet, smart and tired of being overlooked) must try to find her, and uncover the truth behind both events.I haven't read the novel, but based on this, I might. My exposure to the director and screenwriter has been hit-and-miss. This is a quite compelling spy mystery. While it starts out as a slow burn, the last half increases in tension and suspense until it almost causes physical pain. Granted, the end has a *lot* of big revelations, and there certainly are some exposition dumps along the way. This does play fair; nothing is truly hidden from the viewer, everything falls into place once you know everything, and there are hints dropped - disguised well as things that don't seem like they'll be important.The structure is notable; I understand some dislike it, and it does take getting used to. Right from the start, this starts a habit of, every so often, cutting from our protagonists to a different situation, or showing flashbacks(that's where we see the earlier-mentioned missing girl). if you're put off by it early, be warned that it does keep going. Speaking only for myself, it is a choice that makes sense, and everything does eventually pay off. Acting is great for all concerned. Characterization(no "bad guys" here), dialog(with the inimitable dry wit), filming, all solid.This is tremendously detailed and authentic. Cars, clothes, social norms, etc. Of course the personal story told here is fiction, still, it's weaved almost exclusively from the fabric of history. This is the rare blockbuster that treats our knowledge of the past not as something to manipulate into something mainstream, or, *ugh*, a source for conspiracy theories. No, instead, it treats it as what it is... genuinely engaging, and satisfying to come to understand. It's also entirely credible; with today's thrillers, you find yourself missing the plausible, complex-not-convoluted(and not requiring the planner to be omniscient) plot.There is some strong language(one of the only gratuitous and, as far as the terms used goes, anachronistic, aspects), disturbing and/or violent content, and a little nudity and sexuality in this. I recommend this to any fan of drama, puzzle-solving, and fact-based films. 7/10

Take that, U-571! Oh, the irony! "Enigma" was made as a British counter to the supposed historical inaccuracies of the American "U-571," and what happens? The Poles are in a lather at the Brits for historical inaccuracies.Look, you twits, they are both fictional! That means they are not supposed to be historically accurate. And no viewer with half a brain would think any the worse of the Poles based on this movie, because it is FICTION.How do we know it is fiction? Because there were no such persons as Thomas Jericho, Puck, et al. Some of them were based on real people, they say: Hester Wallace on Mavis Batey, who died at 92 this month (and the reason I watched this). However, the real Batey seems to have played a far more key role in breaking Enigma than portrayed. (The movie never makes clear what exactly she does (after all it's secret) or how she has time to go gallivanting around the countryside.)On the other hand, when you make a movie saying a Polish traitor and spy almost cost the war for the Allies, you shouldn't be surprised that Poles might be a bit miffed at you, even if you do give credit to Poland in the beginning of the movie for providing England with an enigma machine, and instructions on how to crack the codes. (Enigma machines had been in use commercially since the 1920s, patented in 1918, so they weren't exactly secret.) Referencing "the greatest convoy battle of all time" and the historical Katyn Massacre in text at the end of the movie, without saying there is no historical connection between the two, also would lead to misunderstandings. (The movie never says what is fiction and what is true.) Here's what is true in the movie: There were Enigma machines, there was a Bletchley Park, there was a Katyn Massacre, there were convoys crossing the Atlantic, there was a Shark code, there was a World War II. Everything and everyone else, as far as I can tell, is made up. Did England actually sink a German U-boat off Scotland and get its Enigma machine (actually, they didn't need the machines, they needed the code books)?The movie wallows in flashbacks for the first half, (sometimes to things that happened just minutes earlier (I think -- it is hard to tell when they happened)). Frankly, I don't think I was intelligent enough to follow them. (Heck, I didn't even understand the beginning of the movie, like why Jericho was persona non grata from the project -- the movie never says what was so terrible that he had done. (I decided to take notes as I watched, but I was still lost.)) And the explanations at the end just made it all the more confusing. Yes, I got the basic plot, but the details looked like a fast sleight of hand game of follow the peanut. I never really cared. Sure, Claire was a red herring (any suspect so early on has to be). But why not just let the internal investigator handle the evidence, rather than risk jail? (Because then there wouldn't be much of a movie.) And where did that nice shiny car come from that they were driving all over the place, like Scotland, (not to mention the tightly rationed gas (which they call "petrol"))? Frankly, there were far too many totally implausible components to the story.Enigma is supposed to be Britain's revenge on Universal Pictures for making a fictional movie about Americans capturing a fictional Enigma machine from a fictional German sub. So they make a movie about the brilliant work done at Bletchley Park. (Except that in Enigma, the British intelligence agents can't find their own missing Enigma machine hidden hurriedly in a motionless car sitting right in front of them. {I'm not sure I would brag about this.}.).But was this actually made by a British movie studio? It was made by Broadway Video and Jagged Films (as in Mick Jagger), and distributed by Buena Vista (i.e., Disney). (Looks British to me.)Bottom line: There sure was a lot of confusing running around and flashbacks (plus some all too skimpy gratuitous sex {in a boardinghouse where visitors were prohibited (so the landlady must have been pretty stupid (or drunk)}) for what turned out to be a fairly simple maguffin. (I haven't seen such a pointless mess since The English Patient.) If the point of the movie was to show the brilliant work done at Bletchley Park, it didn't come close to doing them justice. They looked like a bunch of lopsided frat boys. (Meanwhile, the Yanks were making Sigsaly encrypted AD-DA transceivers (loaning one to Churchill so he and FDR could talk on the radio (look it up)} (Not to mention "Mrs. Minniver")).Spoiler alert: They never come right out and say what the point of the movie was, and why the sinking of the sub was so important (where did that sub come from in the plot, again?). But I guess anyone who could stick with the movie to the end was likely smart enough to figure that out: A British movie studio wanted to capture an Enigma machine from a fictional German sub, to top the American movie studio that captured an Enigma machine from the fictional U-571.(Congratulations.)