Hey folks, Harry here with good ol Smilin' Jack Ruby's look at ENIGMA, which is about the English side of that whole U-571 incident type of thing. There are some spoilers, but Jack says that they really are not anything you should be afraid of, that the script and the film will be far more complex than he's going into about it. In otherwords, he's giving you the packaging and the product but none of the nitty gritty, plot hinges or answers. Which makes it a safe and entertaining read about a project... that sounds pretty dang good. Give it a look see to agree or not. Here's ol Smilin' Jack...
I know that "Enigma" is currently underway with shooting in England, but as it's not out yet, I thought I'd submit this script review that has revisions in it as late as April 7, 2000 done by Hanna Weg, a first-timer who's only previous imdb credit was as an assistant to the director of "By the Sword." "Enigma" was initially adapted from the Robert Harris book by playwright extraordinare Tom Stoppard and is being directed by Michael Apted of "42 Up" and "The World is Not Enough" fame. Acting in it are Dougray Scott, Kate Winslet, Saffron Burrows, Jeremy Northam, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau.
The idea of the Enigma machine and the fact that it was used to encrypt German U-Boat communications during the war is nothing new to American audiences with the recent release of "U-571." However, "Enigma" takes a look at it from the side of the English and how they went about cracking the many different versions of the Enigma code, Shark, Dolphin, Kestrel, etc. as it came in from not only submarines, but also from the Wehrmacht stationed across Europe as well as Luftwaffe communiques. The plot of "Enigma" takes place at Bletchley Park where the numerous teams of mathematicians worked on the code and is actually being filmed there.
The story follows the return of Tom Jericho to Bletchley Park after spending a month away following a breakdown. Jericho is seen as a genius, the only man who could break Shark, but also something of a loose cannon for striking his senior officer and for having a breakdown over the break-up of his relationship with Claire - a mysterious a beautiful woman who works at Bletchley Park as an assistant doing translations with a fleet of women. Jericho has been recalled because, out of the blue, the Germans have changed their code and with the large number of convoys coming across the Atlantic, the Allies are at their mercy. Coinciding with Jericho's return is the disappearance of Claire. As Jericho works against time to crack the new version of Shark, he also begins to investigate exactly who Claire is (a spy? a trollope?) and does so with the aid of the crafty Hester, a housemate of Claire's who isn't seen as being as markedly beautiful as Claire, despite being played by Kate Winslet in the movie.
That's not too much information - trust me. There's nothing there that will give away anything in the movie. I believe, judging from photos posted on the internet, that Dougray Scott will be playing Jericho and I believe Nikolaj Coster-Waldau will be playing one of Jericho's main associates at Bletchley, Puck - though that's just speculation. Saffron Burrows will likely be playing Claire, but I'm not sure who Jeremy Northam will be playing, but most likely the British secret police operative, Wigram.
This will end up being a fairly lively movie, but is definitely not an action picture, just in case anybody got the wrong idea. There are battle scenes out in the North Atlantic, but they are fairly brief. Mostly, this is a cat-and-mouse codebreaking movie with Jericho and Hester acting as the Bobbsey Twins and everyone else acting like they came straight out of "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold." If anyone has seen the play/television film "Breaking the Code" by Hugh Whitemore starring Derek Jacobi which is based on the life of the actual genius codebreaker, Alan Turing, you'll get your semi-historical accuracies. "Enigma," because it was a potboiler novel by Robert Harris (remember the TV-movie "Fatherland?") it has a lot of the feel of a page-turning mystery/suspense thriller that keeps rollicking along and relies more on intrigue than action to keep the reader hooked. The closest Stoppard ever came to something like this was with "Hapgood," his tale of Cold War spygames and the scientists caught in between.
All in all, this will probably be a fun movie to watch, but it certainly won't be breaking any box office records.
Smilin Jack Ruby
