Enigma (2001)

Enigma is Infinity meets Contact halfway as World War II codebreakers at Bletchley Park struggle to break the Nazis' Enigma machine-based code and win the war. Here we see the brainy side of how the war was actually won -- with a modest attempt to accurately represent the intellectual underpinnings of the Enigma project. As with Infinity, a romantic relationship trumps mathematics as the key storyline in Enigma; still, the Tom Stoppard screenplay is much better than wilted tripe and the characters do a clean job with it. Dougray Scott's face is as emotionally impassive as any math prodigy's so it is left to Kate Winslet to understatedly play the intellectual -- oh those hornrims! -- who becomes his serious love interest. First, however, his uninitiated nerdy heart (and a different pound of flesh) is given a workover by the blonde strumpet played to perfection by Saffron Burrows (in one short scene of prone waist-up dalliance plus lots of wrapping him around her finger). Enigma is better than Infinity and almost as good as Finding Neverland not to mention Pearl Harbor. I had to obtain it via Blockbuster since it has been out of stock on Netflix for at least two years. 3.5 stars.