Review – Enigma

Caveat at the outset: if you’re not as instantly enthralled by codebreaking or World War Two sub stuff as I am, there’s a good chance you won’t get as big a kick as I got out of this movie. To be sure, a lot of screen time is taken up by a not-entirely-necessary soap opera romance somewhat interconnected with Bletchley Park’s efforts to crack the “Shark” Enigma code system and a mole’s attempts to inform the Germans about such efforts. Thus it practically goes without saying that this isn’t the sort of movie you can just turn on and watch out of the corner of your eye while you’re doing something else. Further, you get something pretty close to what you’d expect when Michael Apted directs and Tom Stoppard writes. Such relatively minor drawbacks aside, this is a fine piece of polished film-making. Worth seeing