Watch Enigma For Free

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

In 1995 the British declassified Station X, the ultra-secret WWII Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park, 50 miles from London. In 1999, the BBC aired a 4-part documentary about Station X. I first learned about Alan Turing when Nova (the American equivalent of the BBC's Horizon) aired a version of "Station X" cut down to a single 2-hour episode. "Enigma" was released in 2001, well before the present surge of general interest in Bletchley Park and Turing's extraordinary life that has given us "The Imitation Game" (December 2014). Back then it must have been easier to create a fictitious character (Tom Jericho) based on Turing, the eccentric, painfully socially awkward mathematical genius who was one of the stars of Station X. Unfortunately, "Enigma" isn't spectacular even if you don't know anything about Alan Turing. The plot: In March of 1943, codebreakers at Station X discover to their horror that the German navy has changed the code sets used to communicate with U-boats at sea. These were based on the famous and diabolically complex encryption machine known as the Enigma. (That actually happened.) Authorities enlist the help of a brilliant young mathematician, one Tom Jericho (Dougray Scott) to help them, as they put it, find their way back into the code. The possibility of a spy in Station X uis raised, and Tom's love interest, Claire (the 6-foot-tall Saffron Burrows), has disappeared. To solve these mysteries, Tom recruits Claire's best friend, Hester Wallace (based on the historical person Joan Clarke and played by Kate Winslet). While investigating Claire's personal life, the pair discover personal and international betrayals involving the now-infamous Katyn massacre in Poland. Of course, Tom and Hester fall in love. Dougray Scott actually looks more like Alan Turing than does Benedict Cumberbatch ("The Imitation Game"), but there the resemblance to Turing mostly ends. Turing's sorry, shabby reward for the instrumental role he played in winning the war for Britain was to be persecuted during the Cold War because his homosexuality was viewed as a security risk. He committed suicide at the age of 41. Tom Jericho is most assuredly NOT homosexual, nor is he borderline autistic, which is how Turing is played by Cumberbatch.The film does well something that had not been done before, namely to recreate the physical setting at wartime Bletchley Park, especially the Enigma machines themselves and the now-famous decrypting machines Turing invented, the "Bombes."While "Enigma" looks good and plays fairly well as an espionage yarn, the viewer who knows the factual background of this piece of fiction will be dissatisfied. It is surprising that this rather wan film is the work of Tom Stoppard and Michael Apted; they have done better.

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.

This movie is huge falsification of history. First of all - Polish mathematicians and cryptologists decrypted Enigma several years before WWII. Decrypting machines were already built. You may read about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_the_Enigma But Polish contribution to the story in this movie is mentioned in this movie in one single phrase. But there is even worse point. The only bad character of the movie is a Pole! Author of this stupid scenario invented Polish guy who would be able to betray allies and become a German spy. What an absurd ! This 'author' probably knows nothing about polish attitude to Nazis during WWII. Poland during WWII had two occupants and two enemies - Nazi Germany and Soviet Union. But no one would join one enemy against the other. It was impossible. But not for makers of this movie. If Pukowski were a real man, after revealing the truth about Katyn, he would probably commit suicide.

Bad plot: a Pole working in Bletchley learns from one of intercepted German reports about Katyn massacre on Polish officers by Soviet NKVD. He is so upset that he betrays the fact that Allies decode Enigma, nearly bringing disaster on his host country UK... This is a movie worthy of Soviet, or worse, German propaganda, showing heroes as villains.Good plot and movie material: I am sending everyone interested to Wikipedia information about professors Rejewski, Zygalski, and Rozycki, men who broke Enigma and created first computing bombs. This is a better material for a very exciting war movie, although not a happy Hollywood end is available here: Poles are betrayed by Churchill and Rosevelt in Yalta despite their contribution to the Allied war effort, they are depicted as unwanted troublemakers in the pro Soviet British press ... to appease the "lesser evil" Uncle Joe. Especially oblivion of the three heroes who broke Enigma and created systems to read German communication on a production scale is deplorable.