A 2001 British espionage thriller film, written by Tom Stoppard and directed by Michael Apted, based on the novel by Robert Harris. At Bletchley Park during World War II, a young genius (Dougray Scott) races against time to decode a cipher while dealing with a mysterious woman he loves (Saffron Burrows).
The movie also stars Kate Winslet, Jeremy Northam, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Tom Hollander, Donald Sumpter, and Matthew Macfadyen.
It was released on September 28, 2001.
Tropes for the film:
- Creator Cameo: Mick Jagger, one of the film's producers, has a brief cameo as an RAF officer at a dance.
- The Film of the Book: As stated above, it's based on the 1995 novel Enigma by Robert Harris.
- Informed Attractiveness: Claire is portrayed as the more attractive of the two female characters. This is despite the fact that the other one (Hester) is played by Kate Winslet.
- Relationship Upgrade: Unlike in the novel, Tom and Hester are shown to be a couple at the end of the film, with Hester visibly pregnant. At the time, Kate Winslet was pregnant with her daughter Mia.
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: The Katyn Massacre definitely took place, and the British and US governments did indeed suppress evidence of it in order to keep their fragile alliance with the Soviet Union from falling apart, but the events as depicted in the book are entirely fabricated; the only spy to make to the Bletchley Park station was British and passing information to the Soviets. The movie takes it up a notch by cutting Alan Turing out of the film completely and assigning his role in the war to protagonist Tom Jericho, where in the book Jericho is a junior member of Turing's cryptanalysis staff.
