(back)

At the Movies
with Mark Moorehead

Film: Enigma

Cast: Dougray Scott, Kate Winslet, Saffron Burrows

Rating: R

Director: Michael Apted

Now Playing: Harkins Chandler Fashion 20, Harkins Arizona Mills, Centerpoint 11

Viewability Quotient: * (bad)

 

Hollywood is still intent on squeezing all the mileage possible from the 20^th Century’s greatest war. Most of the big battles have been excruciatingly  regenerated in films like Pearl Harbor and Saving Private Ryan.

So where does Hollywood go after covering the big battles? Answer: The small battles, of course.

This year we have seen Charlotte Gray, a film about the heroics of the French underground and the female British counterintelligence agents who assisted them. And, coming out this summer, Windtalkers tells the story of the Navajo Code Talkers of World War II.

Enigma is the counterpart to Windtalkers or the antithesis of creating an unbreakable code. In World War II the United States’ armed forces ingeniously recruited Navajo Indians for the purpose of translating top-secret military messages from English into the Navajo language over the airways and then back into English after the message was received.

The Japanese were never able to break this code. However, in Enigma, the British break an equally daunting German code used by submariners to coordinate attacks on Allied shipping running from the United States to England and the Soviet Union.

Making and breaking military codes saved thousands of lives and stopped the war from dragging on for many more months than it otherwise would have. Unfortunately for Hollywood producers, making and breaking code lacks the glamour and large-scale heroics of a big battle.

Enigma was the name given to the machine that broke the German code. Our story focuses on a brilliant young mathematician, Tom Jericho (played by Dourgray Scott), who developed the enigma machine in 1942.

After breaking the code, Jericho was released from service until the Germans changed the code in 1943. Then, in March, the English and Americans were once again faced with a new incomprehensive German code and sat helplessly as Allied ships were sent to the bottom of the sea.

Jericho is called back into duty to break the new code. Not exactly the stuff that keeps you riveted to your seat.

Director Michael Apted attempts to add a little spice to the story by providing Jericho with a love interest (played by Saffron Burrows) who mysteriously disappears about the same time the Germans change their code.

British intelligence agents trust no one and are hot on the trail of Jericho’s ex-girlfriend Claire.

However, for reasons that we never fully understand, Jericho recruits fellow code breaker Hester Wallace (played by Kate Winslet) to help him find Claire before British intelligence does.

While assisting the nerdy Jericho in locating Claire, Hester and Jericho fall in love. This is where the whole romantic thriller thing falls firmly on its face.

Claire dumps Jericho after just a few weeks of dating and then proceeds to bed half the code breakers at Britain’s top-secret Bletchley Park.

Jericho has his hands full with a new, hot lover and a pressure-cooker, nerve-racking job of breaking the new German code. There’s no way on earth he’d want to give Claire the time of day, let alone risk death or imprisonment in pursuing her.

Another element that renders this plot unbelievable is Jericho’s character. Jericho is morose throughout the movie with his slumped shoulders, depressing speech and dark pallor. He should be working the front desk at the Bates Motel rather than as the central figure of a love triangle.

On the other hand, Claire is a stunning blonde, and the odds of her taking any note of Jericho are a million to one. As a brilliant mathematician, Jericho should have been suspicious of this code-digger from day one.

While the purpose of the breaking the German code is to prevent the catastrophic loss of life and needed munitions to defeat the Axis, we see few consequences of the change in the German code.

With the exception of a cheesy-looking miniature of a flaming supply ship, the director fails to exploit an opportunity to show the audience the price in human terms that was paid for the lack of warning to brave American sailors manning the ships in the cold North Atlantic in 1943.

Kate Winslet put on a few pounds for her character and delivered the most convincing role as a smart as a whip, underutilized and unappreciated code breaker. It would have been much more interesting if Winslet’s character and Burrows had been reversed to provide the film with a real enigma.  

(back)