http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/filmreviews/11077848/The-Imitation-Game-review-clever-calculated.html
Excerpt…..
As an account of the Enigma-cracking mission at Bletchley Park, Morten Tyldum's film is going to have a job on its hands not reminding Sunday-matinee fans of Enigma (2001), Michael Apted's pleasingly old-fashioned adaptation of the Robert Harris bestseller.
So.....I'm going to post some of the reviews and articles I found (not certain if they have been posted before)
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2002-05-24/entertainment/0205230380_1_tom-stoppard-jeremy-northam-tom-jericho
The Appeal Of `Enigma' Is No Mystery
Movies - REVIEW - 'Enigma'
The First-rate Thriller Is A Delicious Little Slice Of Life Set In The Great War.
May 24, 2002|By Roger Moore, Sentinel Staff Writer
A mass grave, a convoy in danger and "the secret that could win the war" are all wrapped up in Enigma.
Oh, and a love triangle.
But "the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." Unless, of course, the "world" is in the middle of World War II. And the little people work at Bletchley Park, England's famed secret code-cracking unit.
Michael Apted, working from a witty and dense script by playwright/screenwriter Tom Stoppard (Shakespeare in Love), has crafted a stylish and surprising mystery thriller out of a story whose ending everyone knows -- World War II, we won it, in case you hadn't heard.
It's 1943, and convoys from America are keeping Britain and the Soviet Union in the war against Germany. One of the secret weapons aiding that is at Bletchley Park. Enigma was the German coding machine used to send coded messages to and from U-boats, between Army units and the like. It was so foolproof that the Japanese adopted a version of it for themselves.
The Poles helped the Brits acquire one (no, U-571 wasn't true), and with the help of crack cryptographers, the Allies were able to read an awful lot of Axis messages.
Tom Jericho (Dougray Scott of Mission Impossible: 2) is one of those analysts. We meet him at the end of a leave which he had to take because he cracked up. And not over code-breaking, it turns out, but over a woman. Claire (Saffron Burrows) is a vivacious beauty who turns poor math-nerds like Tom into goo.
The Germans have changed part of their code. Huge convoys are in danger of U-boat attack within days. Claire has gone missing. And an oh-so-acrid, oh-so-dapper agent (Jeremy Northam) is snooping around. Is Claire a spy? Might Tom have given away the store?
And what's with all those bodies that are being unearthed in the many flashbacks within flashbacks that the script revels in?
Stoppard, adapting the Robert Harris novel, deftly explains the elements of the code-breakers' art without dwelling on them, peopling Bletchley Park with a marvelous collection of misfits: nerds, communists, near-psychotics and the like.
Jericho's ally in his search for the truth is Claire's "plain" roommate, Hester (Kate Winslet). Together, they ignore security, sneak about, abscond with files, put the mystery together and make you wonder how the Brits were ever able to keep this secret for so long under such lax security.
Apted, a documentary filmmaker who has done a Bond film, Coal Miner's Daughter and the new J. Lo thriller Enough in his incredibly varied career, stages a swell chase or two and does well enough by the story's natural suspense.
Mainly, though, he's content to let Stoppard lay out this puzzle and dole out all his best lines to Northam.
"Went off his trolley, didn't he?"
"I've got a little list. And you're on it."
The dashing "Ivor Novello" of Gosford Park here conveys an oily, sinister professional callousness that fits him as perfectly as his overcoat, worn rakishly over his shoulders.
Mick Jagger co-produced this gem, which is a nice updating of the sort of smart, droll, stiff-upper-lip "Great War" thrillers that Britain used to churn out almost weekly. Look for Mr. Lips as perhaps the showiest extra in the history of film in a pub scene.
Pay attention, guess where it's going, and find yourself surprised. We may know how the bigger story ended, but Enigma makes the problems of three little people amount to a lot more than a hill of beans. And how.
All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt. (Charles M. Schulz)
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