Enigma

Enigma

2001. Great Britain. Directed by Michael Apted. Screenplay by Tom Stoppard. With Dougray Scott, Kate Winslet, Saffron Burrows, Jeremy Northam. Enigma is a wartime spy thriller set in Britain’s Bletchley Park, the secret radio intercept headquarters where crypto-analysts successfully cracked the German’s Enigma machine, critically aiding in the Allied defeat of Nazi U-boats in the North Atlantic, and later in staging the Normandy invasion and other decisive assaults. Apted and Stoppard’s adaptation of the Robert Harris bestseller is full of verbal jousts and innuendo, cross and double cross, and while taking some historical liberties, it nonetheless crackles with the wit and suspense of a Graham Greene or Eric Ambler entertainment, also evoking 1940s espionage thrillers by Michael Powell, David Lean, Carol Reed, and Thorold Dickinson. Mick Jagger, who produced and co-financed the film (and who makes a cameo as an RAF officer), lent his personal four-rotor Enigma machine to aid in the film’s meticulous recreation of Bletchley Park, while a ruthlessly charming Northam and plucky Winslet lead a top-notch cast. 119 min.