This is based on a novel - not a true story about Betchley and the Enigma machines. For that watch the Imitation Game. The story is convoluted and absurd. By the time things come together the viewer who cares what happens. Kate Winslet was quite plump here and kudos to her for playing the unattractive one. Saffron Burrows looks quite pretty. Dougray Scott acts tormented well. The supporting cast are all good but this silly story is just not worth watching

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

Enigma is a decent little WWII movie that tries to blend historic and fictional drama. There are moments when both the real and the pretend are quite thrilling, but they end up detracting from each other so much the film is left flatfooted at its conclusion. Based on a novel by Richard Harris, too many essential details of the book are awkwardly crammed in during the last half hour. Watching Enigma is like taking an enjoyable car ride but then realizing you're late and rushing the final few miles to your destination.The historical aspect of the tale concerns the small group of British geniuses enlisted to crack the Nazi's infamous Enigma code. As the movie begins, the Germans have changed the code and left the British completely in the dark just as three huge supply convoys set out from the U.S. to Britain. The codebreakers have 4 days to crack Enigma to prevent U-boats from destroying one or all of those convoys.The fictional element of the story is Thomas Jericho (Dougray Scott), the leading genius among the codebreakers who's returned to work after a stint in an asylum. The intense but halting Jericho fell in love with the beautiful and mysterious Claire (Saffron Burrows), who drove him to a nervous breakdown when she sought out and then spurned his advances. Jericho is still obsessed with Claire, but finds she's disappeared without a trace or explanation. In his efforts to discover what happens to Clarie, Jericho is ably assisted by the almost irresistibly cute and spunky Hester Wallace (Kate Winslet), a secretary at the codebreakers' military base. Jericho is also confounded and harassed by Wigram (Jeremy Northram), a smilingly hard British intelligence agent who has multiple agendas.Both parts of Enigma are fairly good on their own merits, though the struggle to solve the Nazi code and win the war is understandably more compelling than the mystery of a missing woman, no matter how involved it may be. The difficulty is that by splitting its attention, the movie is never able to fully commit to either piece of itself. Though Enigma admirably tries to weave the two together and have them mirror each other, the on screen time spent with each dilemma inevitably gives short shrift to the other. As a viewer, you want to spend more time with the codebreakers AND you want to spend more time with the slowing budding romance of Jericho and Hester AND you want to spend more time on the conflicts between the intellectual men of science and the practical men of war AND you want to spend more time with the subtly blunt confrontations of Jericho and Wigram AND you want to spend more time with Jericho's memories of Claire. This is a case where you're left wanting more, but it's not a pleasant sensation.And as Enigma winds to a finish and the story starts throwing new things at you to set up and explain its big ending, it confirms the imbalance you've been feeling is the real product of a script that needed some things cut out and other things expanded to take their place.While legitimate, that complaint should not distract from the reality that this is a pretty good and entertaining production. It's well acted, well directed and the individual scenes are well written. While not a modern classic of the WWI genre, it's well worth it to spend a couple hours wrapped up in this Enigma.

I am very familiar with this story, as my mother-in-law worked at Bletchley Park as a cypher assistant during WW2. A fact she never revealed to us until 1990, as she respected the Official Secrets Act to the letter. I read Harris book about 2 years ago, and finally watched the movie this week. The real story of Alan Touring, and his colleagues at Bletchley, the building of "the bombes" and the critical role they played is a very compelling story in itself, and had the writers of this movie confined themselves to that, this movie would have been superb. Instead we got a load of the usual Hollywood claptrap of romantic sub-plots with Claire, and dead spy chasing rubbish. We are to believe that during the most critical stage of the U-boat war, and the massive effort to re-establish Shark, that the key man Jericho/Touring went chasing all over Scotland , to track down a traitorous ex-girlfriend. Lots of spare petrol in those days ( NOT). This undermined great performances from Dougray Scott who played the brooding , sullen and exhausted Touring, to perfection, and Kate Winslett, also Jeremy Northam . Still worth watching for their performances alone.